The controversial Dr Marc Edge – Head of the School of Journalism at the University of the South Pacific – clings to his job by his fingernails after his recent disastrous “Media and Democracy” conference that led to official protests and open conflict with his fellow academics. Grubsheet understands that the USP has triggered formal internal disciplinary proceedings that could lead to the dismissal of the Canadian-born academic. He has evidently been given a formal warning after three Pacific Governments – Fiji, Samoa and Tonga – complained about him linking the alleged lack of democracy in those countries to repressive regimes in the Middle East (see previous posting).

Professor David Robie (Photo:Pacific Scoop NZ)

Dr Edge’s relationships with his fellow academics at other media institutions are also in free fall. At the Media and Democracy conference two weeks ago, he was in open conflict with Professor David Robie, Director of the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland’s University of Technology, and with Shailendra Singh, his predecessor as head of journalism at USP. Both men publicly accused him of misrepresenting the university’s journalism program.

Dr Edge is keen to portray the schism as ideological, a battle of ideas between his advocacy of a relatively liberal western media model for Fiji and the “deliberative” model publicly advocated by Professor Robie and the “development” model advocated by Mr Singh. Both models call for more context and cooperation in third world media settings as opposed to the confrontational tendencies of the western media. But the chief concerns of his critics centre on Dr Edge’s personal style, his tendency to blatant self-aggrandisement at the expense of his colleagues and especially his behaviour towards his students.

Shailendra Singh (photo:Indian Weekender)

His treatment of one student, in particular, threatens to become an international incident. Magalie Tingal is a journalist with Radio Djido, the indigenous Kanak station that tops the radio ratings in New Caledonia. She was sent to USP under an agreement between the university and the FLNKS – the Kanak independence movement – designed to improve ties between Francophone journalists in New Caledonia and their Anglophone counterparts in Fiji. Yet she appears to have fallen foul of Dr Edge, so much so that his alleged treatment of her has become a causecelebre on the USP campus.

Magalie Tingal (Photo:Radio Kanaky)

Fellow students report that the feisty Ms Tingal began to question the basis of some of Dr Edge’s lectures. He reportedly responded at first with irritation then disdain and finally barely concealed rage. Matters have since come to a head after Dr Edge failed Ms Tingal in her course. English is Ms Tingal’s third language after Kanak and French and her supporters argue that Dr Edge should have taken that into account. Instead, he evidently marked her to “English as a first language” standard. The episode has caused intense consternation on campus and embarrassed the USP. What was meant to be an exercise in building links between Anglophone and Francophone neighbours, and between the university and the FLNKS, has instead ended in acrimony.

The USP hierarchy is dismayed that Dr Edge appears to have single-handedly damaged the university’s relations with Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and the prospective rulers of New Caledonia. So never mind the breakdown of personal relationships between Dr Edge and his students and fellow academics. The finger of blame is descending on him for fracturing some precious diplomatic ties, and with some countries on which the USP’s very existence depends.

Grubsheet has had a prolonged dispute with Dr Edge that has been comprehensively chronicled in these columns. At first, we took issue with his portrayal of conflict at the Pacific Islands News Association summit earlier in the year where we believed none existed. Then we asked for an explanation as to why he chose to appear in a Fiji Times advertorial promoting the virtues of the Suva apartment building in which he lives. We specifically asked whether Dr Edge – as a USP academic – received any personal benefit or consideration from the owners of the apartment block in exchange for a blatant commercial plug. He’s consistently refused to provide us with an answer to a question we regard as one of journalistic ethics. And when we repeated that question yesterday, his response was a succinct “drop dead”.

Dr Akanisi Kedrayate (Photo:USP)

Dr Edge has also revealed in these columns that he is writing a book on the Fiji media. He announces the fact in a comment on our previous posting, “Rumblings at the Edgefest” with a strange expression of glee. “Just wait until I write my book on the Fiji media. You’re going to love it!” “Just wait”? Is this the portent of a day of reckoning, of our “hero” settling some scores? Yes, Marc, we can’t wait. All we can do is hope that you will soon have all the time in the world in which to write your book. Because it’s high time for you to board that yacht of yours – the stories about which your students are bored to distraction– and sail away from these shores. You aren’t cut out for the place and to follow is the proof – the final straw.

Grubsheet understands that Dr Edge took to locking his students out of the classroom if they arrived late for his lectures. Lateness is a common enough occurrence in the islands and especially for students on pitifully low incomes who have to walk long distances or catch a bus. So it wasn’t long before Dr Edge’s students lodged complaints with the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Law and Education, Dr Akanisi Kedrayate. She formally directed him to cease the practice. What was Dr Edge’s response? He sent his students the following angry email, which ends with an extraordinary and menacing threat. (click on image to see full document)

Marc, threatening reprisals against students in a developing country because they are late is not the Pacific way or any way, for that matter. It is now time for you to go back to Canada and write that book of yours. As Oliver Cromwell famously said to the Rump Parliament in 1653: “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately… Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!

TJS, your sympathy is commendable. I have nothing personal against Marc Edge. No, that’s not true. I am annoyed that he has attacked me publicly for doing my job, and especially for raising the legitimate “public interest” issue of whether he used his position as a senior USP academic to gain a personal benefit from a commercial entity. I have asked him for a yes or no, as opposed to the tortured prevarication he has offered thus far. And he refused to give it.

I have a wider problem in that Dr Edge is schooling the Pacific journalists of tomorrow in a manner that raises some serious questions about the USP’s journalism course. The fact that he is in open conflict with his predecessor, Shailendra Singh, and Professor Robie at AUT, suggests that my own concerns are shared widely enough for the matter to be formally investigated. And then there are the individual stories from students about being allegedly victimised if they don’t worship at the altar of Dr Edge.

Something is clearly amiss at USP and I share the views of others that it’s time for the authorities there to act decisively to protect the university’s reputation. Dr Edge had a successful career in Canada before he came to Suva so i don’t think he’s an object of pity. Just a square foreign peg in a round Pacific hole.

Its sad how Graham and now his sidekick Ranjit Singh have ganged up to take on this Canadian fella Mark Edge – are you two angling to take over at USP School of Journalism. It seems nothing has changed in the journalism world – except characters:

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

July 11, 2002

PETER LOMAS OF PINA
AND PACNEWS INTERVIEW WITH DAVID ROBIE

I hope you were all, as we were, entertained by the response from Peter Lomas of the Pacific Islands News Association to the PACNEWS interview with David Robie. Like all good fiction, it made for nice light reading.

As the reporter who wrote the story, I would like to address a number of issues raised by the interview and the subsequent flurry of activity by Peter Lomas, under the name of PINA.

Let’s clear this up straight away, because this is at the crux of the misunderstandings over this story and the wider issues it raises. The argument, as I have already written to PINA President Johnson Honimae, is NOT against PINA as an organisation, any more than an argument against Dick Cheney, for example, is an argument with the entire population of the United States.

It is a story, mainly, about the conduct of one individual who seems to have an inordinate influence on the activities of PINA, and who appears to have been using PINA as a vehicle to protect his own interests and mount attacks on others that regularly stretch the boundaries of unethical journalism.

My story documented some of those attacks, and was also used as a test to gauge the reactions of those involved. So far the response has proceeded as expected, and fulfilled every prediction. History tends to repeat itself – let’s see if it does here.

It is also wrong to read the article as one gunshot in the silly “war” between PINA and PIBA.

The story was not written as an exercise in spiteful mudslinging, but in response to the continuous complaints I have heard over the conduct of this individual from many sources in the region. I have my own breathtaking examples, but this is not the place to relate them.

My story was an attempt to hear Mr. Robie’s side of events, certainly, which have never been afforded the column inches devoted to those who have attacked him. But it was also backed up by a large pile of documented evidence from the archives of Fiji’s three dailies, Islands Business magazine and interviews with USP students, staff and media workers who witnessed what was happening at the time attempts were being made by Mr. Robie’s opponents to get him thrown out of Fiji.

A number of PINA members, current and former, were also interviewed for background, and they also confirmed that the activities of Mr. Lomas against David Robie were representative of the kind of underhanded manipulation that has been practised for many years.

I mailed the PINA Secretariat several times during the compilation of the story and received one response, which was included in my story. Mr. Lomas chose not to answer my direct questions, though they were sent directly to him and “forwarded” them to Mr. Honimae, who would have had no knowledge of the events being written about except what he was told by his own Secretariat – Lomas. These correspondences have been sent to the Fiji Times as evidence (yes, that word “evidence” again).

If Mr. Lomas cares to cry “defamation,” let him produce a list of facts that will stand up to scrutiny instead of a stream of baseless rhetoric.

No, the argument is not with PINA as an entity, or its members. The argument is against the destructive and dirty politics — and indeed the bare-faced lying — being practised by Mr. Lomas (and, in this case, others) to whip up sentiments against perceived “opponents.”

In relation to Mr. Lomas’ response, he did in fact send PACNEWS a lengthy letter, which he has now circulated, refuting the points raised in the David Robie story. The arguments are very passionate, as you have read, but they contain not one single demonstrable fact in “the interests of accuracy and fairness” (the irony!!). Unlike many others in his immediate circle, we are not in the business of cutting and pasting Mr. Lomas’ writings and running them under someone else’s name, or no name at all. Unfortunately, many seem to believe what he says without ever digging into the background.

Mr Lomas expressed his regret at the PACNEWS “standard of journalism,” with no apparent sense of irony.

Let’s perform a quick examination of the “standard” of the story that ran in the Fiji Times on Monday and on the Pacific Islands Report website. It was run as a news item in the Fiji Times, with no byline and no attribution. While it attacks PACNEWS for failing to respond (I gave Mr. Lomas every opportunity to respond while I was writing the story) it does not seek a response itself.

As for “annually audited accounts,” I have spoken to a PINA member who has been to almost every AGM and was involved with the PINA executive for many years. The individual says audited accounts were never produced as long as he was involved with them.

It then concludes with the kind of line that encapsulates perfectly the “standard of journalism” Mr. Lomas is happy to promote as long as it serves his interests: “Mr Robie could not be reached for comment.”

Mr. Robie has several easily available e-mail addresses, a website updated daily that readers can contact online, and contacts easily available through USP. No attempt was made to contact Mr. Robie.

This kind of blatant lying and personally motivated propaganda should not be tolerated, especially by a newspaper like the Fiji Times, and it should certainly not be tolerated by donors who — in some cases with privately admitted knowledge of this conduct — continue to provide Mr. Lomas with considerable funds.

Oh you’re back. Never mind the PINA this and PINA that craps….media watcher.
Frankly I just skimmed through…not bothered..nah and I believe a majority of us don’t…nah we have seen this nonsence before…

You have the galls to name everybody else but no balls to to tell us who you really are.

What a shame to us normal people that we have to deal with such creatures ( I’m sorry as Jukebox would put it ….this could be a piglet)

Come on give us a name and lets start a real discussion….or are you afraid, scared as always using media freedom to cast a stone (as Daya Nand aka David Nancy) would put it, to everybody else and hide behind annonymity hoiping no one will identify you.

Otherwise get back to your cowardly hole and stay there.

Ps..like a wart in the pigs arse you will appear once in a while …that I know.

All these so-called journos writing about the Pacific are like old housewives – hell bent on settling scores:

Asia Pacific Network: 18 January 1998

MEDIA: BACKGROUND TO A FIJI VENDETTA

A decade-old vendetta against a New Zealand journalist by a Fiji-based media group has again resurfaced.

By HARRY STONER, published in the New Zealand Journalist in April 1989

In mid-1989, the New Zealand Journalist branded as a “personal vendetta” a series of attacks by a group of Fiji-based journalists against New Zealand author and journalism educator David Robie. Later that year, an internationally published book by Robie, Blood on their Banner: Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific, raised questions in a section entitled “A compromised media”. Now that Robie has been appointed to head the journalism program at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, five unsigned attacks have been published in the Fiji Daily Post and Sunday Post. They were the subject of a formal ethics complaint filed with the Fiji News Council in April 1998. The Daily Post publicly apologised to Robie in November 1998.

ROBIE TARGET OF VENDETTA

TWO Suva-based magazines are having an unseemly spat in which an entire edition of one publication, printed and bound, was recalled from the brink of distribution to avoid legal action from a rival.

At the centre of this bitter row is freelance Pacific Affairs writer (and New Zealand Journalists Union member) David Robie, who dared to criticise a publication he once wrote for and was then the object of a lengthy personal attack in one of its following issues.

It is a story of press freedom, the tensions between journalists and publishers, and the politics of reporting a part of the world that is increasingly divided and volatile.

The March 1989 edition of the magazine Pacific Islands Monthly went to press with an unprecedented editorial directly attacking its rival Islands Business. The leader accused IB of demeaning the standard of journalism in the region and using invective and distortion in a personal vendetta against Robie.

Robie, 43, has edited newspapers in Australia and South Africa, and wrote for Agence France-Presse in Paris. He has covered Pacific affairs for New Zealand, British and Australian publications for the last decade and has written two books on the region.

Another, Blood on their Banner, on nationalist struggles in the Pacific, is due for international publication in August.

Now writing for Pacific Islands Monthly, he was formerly a correspondent with IB for eight years and during that time covered many of the region’s big stories including the 1984 insurrection in New Caledonia and the Rainbow Warrior affair.

IB and Robie parted company in early 1988 but relations between them hit an all-time low later in the year after he wrote a feature analysing Pacific media politics (“The muzzling of the Pacific press?” New Zealand Monthly Review December 1988) in which he described IB as a mouthpiece for the Rabuka regime.
David Robie The article reported how media corporations owned by Rupert Murdoch and French mogul Robert Hersant came to dominate the Pacific press, and how the Fiji coups had radically curbed press freedom.

Robie said IB eulogised military stongman Sitiveni Rabuka (the magazine made him Pacific Man of the Year, 1987), that publisher Robert Keith-Reid wrote articles many considered pro-coup propaganda and that the magazine hired an extreme right-wing columnist to cover New Caledonian affairs.

It was the hiring of David Los, a non-journalist who runs an English-language school and has since 1984 carried out a poison pen campaign against Pacific journalists he regarded as too sympathetic to Kanak nationalism in Noumea, that precipitated Robie’s split with IB.

In December 1987, IB published a long and vitriolic letter from Los attacking Robie, then one of the magazine’s senior writers, and mysteriously omitted to offer Robie a right of reply.

An apology of sorts was inserted in the next edition at the insistence of Robie’s lawyer but the magazine then engaged Los as a New Caledonian correspondent. Known to have close links with the local anti-independence ultra-right, Los’s contributions are generally sarcastic tirades against the Kanak independence movement which he is fond of describing as terrorist.

Robie resigned soon after and began writing for the rival, Murdoch-owned PIM.

He alleges IB has continued to to publish his material and photographs in breach of copyright, that the magazine owes him more than F$3000, and that it has failed to return him more than 70 photographs it holds on file. These allegations were the target of IB’s successful legal threat and were subsequently removed from the PIM, editorial.

On the same day Robie filed legal action seeking payment and return of the photographs.

But the dispute flared again when Robie’s article on the muzzling of the Pacific press was published. IB reproduced the article in its January edition, in breach of copyright, and interspersed three opinion pieces devoted to criticising Robie: by IB publisher Robert Keith-Reid, editor Peter Lomas, and columnist David Los. In all, the spread took five pages.

Keith-Reid alleged Robie was anti-American, anti-French, anti-Fiji coup, and had waged a campaign against IB. In reply to Robie’s allegation that the magazine was a mouthpiece for Rabuka, Keith-Reid wrote that “Except for four days’ imprisonment and some subsequent harassment and threats experienced by the publisher, there has been absolutely no attempt by authorities in Fiji to censor or interfere with the publication of this magazine.”

Lomas questioned Robie’s integrity, accused him of being blinkered, and insinuated he could not translate French. Robie lived and worked in France and covered French Pacific affairs for several years.

Los concluded his contribution with this extraordinary threat: “May I suggest that Robie’s little game has gone too far and that a legal process has been set in motion in Noumea that may give him a chance to see the inside of a prison if he cares to set foot in New Caledonia again.”

PIM responded to this attack on one of its writers, protesting in a full-page editorial that “the pages and editorial resources of an established production should be abused in a personal vendetta which, to be frank, fails to address (Robie’s) criticism.”

PIM called IB’s “profile” on Robie a “sad and embarrassing reflection on Pacific journalism” and said that it would continue to publish Robie’s work.

John Richardson, who was editor of IB from 1983 to 1987, also protested that “attack” on Robie, saying as far as he was concerned Robie was the magazine’s “best correspondent by far and the only one prepared to cover difficult and dangerous stories”.

He disagreed that Robie was a “leftist”, as had been alleged. Robie, he wrote, was in fact “a liberal with no political affiliations whatsoever. What he does possess, however, is a sharp awareness of what is unjust. This is vital to any journalist worth his salt.

Robie himself said it was scandalous that IB could “wage a malicious vendetta like this against a journalist and then gag a rival magazine from trying to expose the truth in an editorial”.

He said it was distasteful when a journalist had to resort to legal remedies but “the degree of malice shown by IB, towards me has left me no choice”. Robie is believed to be filing a defamation action against IB.

“The bizarre events of the last few months just endorse the theme of my article about the threats to press freedom in the Pacific.”

Harry Stoner was the alter ego of Phil Twyford, then a specialist Pacific Affairs writer for the Auckland Star and president of the Auckland metropolitan branch of the NZ Journalists Union. In May 1989, Robie filed a defamation writ before the Fiji High Court seeking damages against IB, Keith-Reid, Lomas and Los. It eventually lapsed because Robie was living in NZ at the time.

Graham and Ranjit are repeating history – this Canadian fella should take heart that Fiji is a snakepit of vipers who will do everything to drive the head of jorunalism out of Fiji – go ask David Robie

Article by Mat Oakley of Pacnews on 28 June 2002:
(published in the Daily Post on 30 June 2002)

Published as a full page article in the Fiji Daily Post on 30 June 2002. Also distributed by Pacnews (Pacific Islands Broadcasting Association) news agency throughout the Pacific to radio stations and newspapers, 28 June 2002.

By Mat Oakley, of Pacnews

During his time at the University of the South Pacific, Journalism Coordinator David Robie endured numerous attacks from some senior sections of the Fiji press and one Pacific media organisation — PINA. What was behind it and why were they so intent on getting rid of him? Just before Robie left Fiji last Friday, he told his side of the story and why he believes personal agendas are corrupting media in the Pacific.

DAVID ROBIE, the University of the South Pacific’s former journalism coordinator, left Fiji last week after five controversial years.

It’s the end of an era of sorts for Pacific journalism education, an often stormy era in which Robie has been both praised and vilified for his efforts.

The bare facts would appear to speak for themselves.

For much of the time, Robie has been running the entire programme alone, away from his family in New Zealand: designing the course, teaching the course, supervising the students’ newspaper Wansolwara, operating websites, and, as USP Vice Chancellor Savenaca Siwatibau said, “living in his office”.

In between holding the programme together, he sat on committees overseeing media training in the Pacific, published books and articles and lobbied the university, eventually successfully, for funding to expand the programme.

Under his guidance, the student newspaper and website won 10 awards or citations in the regional Journalism Education Association’s annual Ossie awards.

Robie says his work at USP has helped produce a cadre of journalists with a broad, and most importantly ethical, grounding in journalism across multiple media disciplines, something that, with the exception of Papua New Guinea, he says was previously lacking in the Pacific.

“In the region, mostly journalists have had minimal training and usually short-course training if they’re lucky — many of them have not really had much training at all.”

USP has produced 55 graduates from its journalism programme since its inception in 1994 — 49 of them under Robie’s tutelage.

Two-thirds of those graduates are now working in the media industry itself, Robie says, and most of the others are in media related jobs with NGOs and other organisations.

Robie heads to New Zealand’s Auckland University of Technology leaving the USP programme in much better health than he found it — though perhaps the legacy of routine 16-hour days and seven-day weeks has not been so kind to his personal health.

The university has just agreed to start work on a new F$250,000 building for the journalism school to replace the current “ad hoc” facilities. There are also two new full-time lecturers.

Vice Chancellor Savenaca Siwatibau told the student newspaper Wansolwara this month that “the beginning of the programme and the funding were on shaky grounds. It was David who ran with it and now, of course, it’s working. We need to thank David for that”.

Even though the programme is working, there is no doubt it has suffered to an extent from being, for the most part, a one-man show. Robie is not Superman and some students say certain modules of the course were under-taught.

Until now, attempts by USP to find colleagues for Robie have been short-lived. One student has put this down to personality clashes between lecturers, though Robie dismisses the suggestion.

But Robie sees the new building as a vote of confidence in his work and he seems to have repaid the confidence USP showed in him in the face of sustained attacks from specific quarters of Fiji-based media.

The latest attack came just last week in a story marking Robie’s departure broadcast on Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat programme.

In an interview with reporter James Panichi, Robert Keith-Reid, publisher of Pacific with Islands Business magazine, delivered a bitter assault on Robie.

The attack was largely personal and Keith-Reid did not offer any specific criticisms of Robie’s work. But he did complain that before Robie came along, his company had enjoyed a good relationship with the USP programme.

That might seem strange, since there had only been six graduates out of USP Journalism before Robie arrived, but Robie himself said he was not entirely surprised by the tone of Keith-Reid’s comments.

It’s been no secret in Pacific media circles that Keith-Reid and other senior Islands Business staff, current and former, have been enemies of Robie since 1988, when Robie resigned as an Islands Business correspondent after Keith-Reid and editor Peter Lomas published an attack on him by New Caledonian right-winger David Los, who objected to Robie’s perceived sympathy for the Kanak independence movement.

To Robie’s dismay, Islands Business offered him no right of reply, and Robie’s lawyer forced the magazine to publish an apology in the following issue. Islands Business then hired Los, a teacher with no experience in journalism, as a correspondent, which dismayed Robie enough for him to resign and join rival magazine Pacific Islands Monthly.

Robie then published a story criticising the personal agendas he believed were controlling regional Pacific media.

Islands Business was apparently deeply stung, as it reprinted the entire article in breach of copyright and ran three separate opinion pieces — from Keith-Reid, Los and Lomas — devoted to rubbishing Robie.

The entire exercise took up five pages. Pacific Islands Monthly labelled it “an embarrassing reflection on the state of Pacific media” and even former Islands Business editor John Richardson slammed it. Robie launched a F$135,000 defamation suit.

Indeed, what would appear to be a fierce vendetta against Robie on the part of Islands Business and the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) — which shared staff and still share the same central Suva building — has made Robie’s tenure at USP much harder than it needed to be.

Robie was not allowed to come quietly. In late 1997, the Daily Post published a series of articles expressing alarm that USP was considering hiring Robie. In a turn of phrase implying a certain remoteness between the Post and PINA, the newspaper said PINA was “understood to support” another candidate, Sarita Singh, who had impressive qualifications but no experience running a university course.

The newspaper published lengthy devotions to Singh’s CV, but offered only a clipped appraisal of Robie’s achievements, which include three decades of work as journalist in the Pacific, Europe, Africa and Australia/New Zealand, plus a five-year stint running the journalism programme at the University of Papua New Guinea.

The articles painted Robie as a left-wing troublemaker opposed to the Rabuka Government.

One senior Daily Post staff member at the time has since told Robie the articles arrived through the newspaper’s fax machine on PINA letterhead!

Editor of the Post at the time was Laisa Taga, who a few months later joined Islands Business. She was also treasurer of PINA.

Peter Lomas, who Robie believes is the orchestrator of the attacks on him, worked for both Islands Business and PINA.

USP refused to be bullied and went ahead with the appointments, but the Rabuka Government nevertheless delayed issuing the work permits for both Robie and fellow appointee Ingrid Leary, leading the Journalism Students Association to deliver a petition to Rabuka saying: “As students we are gravely concerned that the university’s academic independence appears to be compromised by outside influences”.

Though Robie eventually got his work permit, those “outside influences” apparently refused to give up. Later that year, the Fiji Times reported that the government was investigating “complaints” that Robie was breaching his work permit by publishing articles outside USP. It was referring to his website Café Pacific, which Robie had set up as an educational project at the University of Technology in Sydney in 1996 and continued to run as a hobby.

SVT senator Filipe Bole even raised the issue in the House and for a few weeks it was uncertain whether Robie and Leary’s work permits would be revoked.

USP vigorously defended the pair, saying outside publication was part of their job descriptions and neither lecturer was being paid for their extra-curricular work.

Reporters Sans Frontieres, the international media freedom organisation, protested strongly to Bole. The New Zealand Journalists Training Organisation fired off a letter.

Even Jone Davukula, former press secretary to Rabuka, wrote to the Daily Post saying “local journalists were involved in these complaints, which seem to be based mainly on these persons’ disagreement with either the views of David Robie or Ingrid Leary, or the fact that they have been lawfully employed by the USP.

“Where is the Fiji journalists’ much vaunted Code of Ethics?” he concluded.

Already, the Fiji Journalism Institute and Fiji TV had complained about the attempt on the part of the same media organisation to block Robie’s appointment.

Few within the industry seemed to be in any doubt over the real source of the campaign, even though Robie says his real enemies never came forward, preferring to work behind the scenes influencing others to attack him.

Phillip Cass, a former USP journalism lecturer from the UK, hinted at the curious source of the attacks in a letter to the Daily Post in February 1998 when he said: “That kind of antipathy towards us (Europeans) cannot be entirely because of the colour of our skin because, the last time I saw that critic, he was a great deal whiter than I am.”

Ironically it was the Daily Post, now under the editorship of Jale Moala, which followed up with an editorial pointing a rather more direct finger at the alleged culprit. “The saddest thing is the deafening silence from the Pacific Islands News Association and the Fiji Media Council. By failing to support the rights of journalists – whether they be teachers or students or whatever – these organisations are helping to destroy the very freedom of expression they have so often said they protect,” he wrote.

Robie was even more direct on the subject.

“You only have one or two people like that, who are mischievous, who make these false statements, and everybody else laps it up. Nobody actually investigates.”

When contacted, Lomas would not comment, and referred all questions to current PINA president Johnson Honimae, of the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation, who was not in the post when the campaign against Robie was taking place. PINA did release a response though, attributed to Honimae.

“PINA members have said it is critically important that qualified Pacific Islands trainers and educators get the opportunity to train and teach in their own region. That was PINA’s position on the appointment of Mr Robie and remains unchanged where Mr Robie’s successor is concerned.”

So what was the motive behind this campaign? The settling of old scores would not seem to account sufficiently for the venom of it, and Robie says PINA’s “jobs for qualified Pacific Islanders” mantra is not credible, considering that the PINA secretariat is run by Lomas, a New Zealander who has taken a Fiji passport, and his common law wife Nina Ratulele, who was hired as PINA Nius editor and administrator without any experience in journalism.

Neither went through a transparent appointment process themselves, Robie says.

“Does it have something to do with attempts to corner the lion’s share of journalism education and training funds for the South Pacific? Independent university courses don’t fit comfortably with this grand scheme because they teach critical thinking as well as vocational skills,” Robie wrote on his Cafe Pacific website in September 1998 in response to attempts to get his work permit revoked.

In an interview a few days before his departure, Robie said he is still baffled by the sheer malevolence of his critics, who he said inhabit “a whirling cesspool of intrigue and backstabbing”, but believes their motives go beyond personal differences.

“I think there’s a fundamental mindset among people in key positions in the media – editorial executives, management people – that is 15 to 20 years behind the times. Many seem to think that the world hasn’t moved on and it’s surprising in many respects because some of the people who have that mindset come from countries that have made some major changes to their whole approach to journalism training and education — Australia and New Zealand for example.

“But many in the most influential positions in the Pacific don’t seem to have caught up with that. And I think that’s because there’s been a pattern of donor funding in the region, which is a very cosy sort of arrangement. For 25 years that’s worked very well, but it’s also created a dependency mentality in the media.

“[The attacks] were the result of petty jealousies and a sort of territorial thing. Some of the people that are behind these attacks fit into this cosy network and someone like me has different ideas. It’s a very different approach than what these people are used to and I think they see it as a threat.”

That threat may stem partly, he believes, from the possibility that the USP course’s productivity throws a sharp light on a short course approach to training that he says is largely fruitless.

“There’s a lot of misrepresentation of our programme. We use methods that are used very widely overseas. We use problem-based learning. A lot of our work is very much based on projects and the outcomes of those projects. It’s very focused on practical outcomes and when you compare that to some of the short course training around the region, where there are no real outcomes and basically anyone just attends a course, we have a very structured system on assessing the progress and abilities of the people that go through our programme.”

Donor funds are being routinely wasted in the Pacific on short course training, Robie said, and his attackers were possibly afraid that the USP course posed a threat to the steady stream of donor money on which they rely.

PINA disagree.

“PINA members also believe there is a place for both entry-level education and training and continuing training and education. PINA agrees that in some situations where short form training has been driven by outside interests and not driven by the needs of the Pacific it has been a waste … this is why PINA is seeking more of a say in determining trainers. It is also why PINA members feel strongly that more of this training should be conducted by trained Pacific Islands trainers,” PINA said in a statement.

Robie said this demand for “more of a say” amounts to political interference, and is convinced PINA’s Suva bosses want a compliant face in the USP Journalism programme who will not pose a threat to the interests of its secretariat.

“There are many people who benefit from the short course gravy train and they’re quite happy for that system to carry on.

“I’ve been on one of these major training advisory groups for six years and I leave it thinking it has not made much of a contribution to the region.”

His critics are probably delighted that he has gone, but does that mean the ugly machinations will disappear? Sadly, probably not, for it seems that as long as there are personal fiefdoms to defend within the regional media — and donors willing to fund them — there will always be someone new to attack.

Graham, we at the journalism school will survive even if you manage to drive (with the help of your masters in the regime) the Canadian prof Edge out of USP. Robie left and we are still here – he ate humble pie and came back to make new noises about Fiji journalism:

Journalism standards in the Pacific are under fire, as an outspoken media lecturer leaves Fiji.

Since the early 1990s, the School of Journalism at Fiji’s University of the South Pacific (USP) has been one of the most important training grounds for aspiring reporters throughout the Pacific region.

The School’s emphasis on investigative reporting and government accountability has produced almost a generation of journalists, now working at media outlets throughout the region.

But for the man behind the course, New Zealand journalist David Robie, it hasn’t always been smooth sailing.

It’s not surprising, therefore, that as Mr. Robie announced his decision to return to New Zealand, not everyone was sad to see him leave.

Pacific Beat’s JAMES PANICHI examines the clash of personalities in the training of Pacific journalists.

***************

For five years, Mr. Robie has run — almost single-handedly — the USP’s School of Journalism, acting as both lecturer and administrator of the program.

He also edited students’ copy for the USP’s newspaper, Wansolwara, which developed a reputation for fiercely independent reporting during Fiji’s May 2000 coup.

But Mr. Robie says the long hours at the university were ultimately responsible for his decision to leave the country to take up a teaching post at the Auckland University of Technology.

“I can’t think of another situation anywhere in the world where you’d have a journalism course with nine core courses and one person essentially running that,” Mr. Robie says.

“Of course it took a toll on my situation, my health, keeping the program running,” he says.

Professional standards and media feuds

Mr. Robie never made any secret of the low esteem in which he held many of Fiji’s journalists and often told his students they should be aiming much higher.

This abrasive style upset many local media practitioners, who formed the view that he was self-centered and interested in building up his own profile.

As the animosity towards him grew, the editors of some of the largest media organizations in Fiji began to turn down applications from graduates of the School of Journalism, claiming they were ill suited to work in the country.

Robert Keith-Reid, the publisher of the Pacific Magazine with Islands Business, is just one journalist who has been locked in a very bitter public stoush with the outspoken lecturer.

“He certainly works very hard, and is an industrious fellow,” Mr. Keith-Reid says.

“But he has a high view of himself which, I’m afraid, I don’t share, and I believe quite a number of other well-known journalists in the region don’t share either.”

But with many media outlets in Fiji — be it English-language, Hindi or Fijian — often falling short of internationally recognized standards of impartial and independent reporting, was Mr. Robie’s campaign to lift journalism levels justified?

“Well, there are quite a few people who, for a very long time, and in very different circumstances, have been trying to improve the standards of journalism in the Pacific islands,” Mr. Keith-Reid says.

” He was by no means the only person in that field. But he liked to give the impression that he was. Certainly the only one that mattered.”

Robie hits back

Mr. Robie puts most of the criticism he has attracted down to the sensitivity of local journalists who are, he believes, unwilling to acknowledge their own limitations.

“I think they’re a very petty group of people … who have had things their way for a very long time,” Mr. Robie told Radio Australia.

“They are basically 15 or 20 years behind what’s happening in the rest of the world for journalism education and training,” he says.

“So when a program like ours at USP began in 1994, there was a challenge to the old school,” he says.

Of the 55 graduates who have trained at the USP School of Journalism since 1994, 49 of them have had Robie as a lecturer.

Of those graduates, Mr. Robie says two-thirds are now working with media organizations throughout the Pacific, while the rest are in media-related jobs.

But how have students been affected by the boycott of the course by some Fiji media outlets?

“I think it’s a vote of no-confidence by the graduates in the particular media organizations that you’re thinking of,” Mr. Robie says.

“You look at organizations like Fiji Television, almost half of their staff are our graduates,” he says.

“A program like ours offered a double major, which means journalists come out not only with a qualification in journalism, but they also come out with a qualification in economics, history, politics, management, sociology, tourism and so on, and they look for a career path.

“They’re not going to be terribly interested in working for an organization which has a very negative attitude to education and training when they’ve actually got career choices.”

The future of the School

Mr. Robie says that while he is sad to leave, the School of Journalism is now in safe hands, with the University committed to building new campus facilities and funding the courses.

“We’ve now got two very good people, broadcasting lecturer Steve Sharp and Shailendra Singh, who is a former editor of The Review news magazine here in Fiji,” Mr. Robie says.

But Mr. Robie’s critics claim his departure will be enough to guarantee the future of journalism in the country.

“Now that he’s gone, we will once more — hopefully — be able to establish good relations with the School of Journalism,” says Mr. Keith-Reid.

“We could help steer it in a direction in which it can produce journalists which we can use, rather than the type of journalists that Mr. Robie thinks we can use.”

Isa, Mark Edge – go ask David Robie whether to go or not to go; Graham Davis tells you: As Oliver Cromwell famously said to the Rump Parliament in 1653: “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately… Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!

Mark, David Robie was driven out – look at him today – he has gone on to great heights – even one of your critics Ranjit Thakur Singh graduating with a journalism degree – Peter Lomas and his attack dogs at PINA had sent Robie packing: As for Mr. Robie, we wish him many happy years back in his homeland. Look where he is today – even Graham and Ranjit are singing his praise while getting their own columns published by none other than Peter Lomas in the Fiji Sun – the Judas who with Keith Reid pulled the departure knife against Robie

PINA response to Mat Oakley’s article, circulated to PINA members on its email listserve:

I have asked that the letter which follows be sent to you following a defamatory attack on PINA, some PINA members, and PINA’s staff by New Zealander David Robie. Mr. Robie is a former coordinator of the University of the South Pacific journalism program who recently left the program before completing his current term. This one-sided report was distributed widely by the Pacific Islands Broadcasting Association (PIBA) through its Pacnews service.

Despite our requests for an opportunity to respond Pacnews has refused.

In the interests of accuracy and fairness I have now asked that the letter which follows be sent to all our PINA members and PINA Nius Online recipients. It is from myself as PINA president and William Parkinson, managing director of leading broadcaster Communications Fiji Limited, as immediate past president.

We regret it is necessary to do this. We are disappointed by the refusal of Pacnews to carry our response and provide accuracy and fairness.

Regrettably, this is not the only time I have had to complain to Pacnews recently over the standard of its journalism.

We are astonished by the seemingly endless “farewell” of New Zealander David Robie from the University of the South Pacific journalism program, and his continuing attacks on people in the regional news media.

His latest comments, carried by Pacnews, are defamatory. Because of this we request that Pacnews – in the interests of accuracy and fairness – distributes this response to all those outlets Pacnews sent the original Robie report.

Contrary to what was reported, Mr. Robie’s hostility to PINA goes back to his involvement in unsuccessful efforts in the 1980s to form a rival to PINA, called the Pacific Journalists Association.

This, unlike PINA, was to be controlled from Australia and New Zealand rather than from within the Pacific Islands.

It failed totally because it was rejected within the Pacific Islands.

It was rejected the same way Mr. Robie’s ceaseless self-promotion and attempts to impose his views on the Pacific Islands news media have been widely rejected. It was rejected in the same way Mr. Robie’s involvement in attempts to prevent Sitiveni Rabuka speaking at the 1991 PINA convention were rejected by PINA’s members.

Mr Robie seems to be blinkered in his belief he knows what is best for the Pacific Islands news media. Rejection of his views has him searching for conspiracies everywhere.

There are no conspiracies. Just a lot of people in the Pacific Islands who do not see the world the same way Mr. Robie does.

For example, he tries to perpetrate the myth that PINA is opposed to the USP journalism program and entry-level journalism education. To support his conspiracy “theory” he totally ignores that the establishment of the USP journalism program was initiated by PINA.

Mr. Robie also perpetrates the myth that PINA opposed his appointment personally.

What PINA did was restate the position of its members from throughout the region’s news media.

PINA members have said it is critically important that qualified Pacific Islands trainers and educators get the opportunity to train and teach in their own region.

That was PINA’s position on the appointment of Mr. Robie and remains unchanged where Mr. Robie’s successor is concerned.

PINA has worked constantly with people like UNESCO to develop and promote the pool of training and education expertise within the region, people who know, understand and have a long-term commitment to the Pacific Islands.

If there are many others in the Pacific Islands news media who in their own right disagree with Mr Robie and his work perhaps Mr Robie should look in a mirror.

Mr. Robie also attacks methods of training in the region and appears to think he is the only one who knows the “modern” way.

He typically ignores, for example, that PINA was heavily involved in establishing and launching the biggest online journalism training program in Asia-Pacific.

Journalists throughout the Pacific Islands have been taking continuing and innovative university-run courses via the Internet alongside colleagues from throughout Asia.

If this is not modern what is?

Mr. Robie also continues to promote his claim that short-form training, such as workshops, is a waste of time and money. PINA members — especially those who actually operate news media organisations — disagree.

They see short-form training also filling a critical role, in advanced journalism training and in training for the many areas of news media work other than journalism.

Unlike Mr. Robie, PINA members have to face the reality of daily operations, producing newspapers and magazines and operating radio and TV stations.

They believe all areas of a news media organization must be well trained, and strong, and not just the journalists. That is if news organizations are to have the resources and strength to do good journalism, and withstand the pressures this can bring.

PINA agrees that in some situations where short form training has been driven by outside interests and not driven by the needs of the Pacific it has been a waste. It is why PINA members feel strongly that more of this training should be conducted by trained Pacific Islands trainers.

Mr. Robie also makes much of transparency and accountability and claims this is lacking in PINA.

PINA is a democratic, transparent and representative organization.

Our members are radio and TV stations, newspapers, magazines, news agencies, journalism schools and national associations of news media practitioners from throughout the Pacific Islands.

PINA’s officers are elected openly by these members in general meetings, according to the PINA constitution.

PINA’s annual accounts are audited by one of the region’s leading accountancy firms and distributed to all members.

PINA’s views are shaped and mandated by its members.

Can the same be said of the so-called Pacific Media Watch organization Mr. Robie has self-created and now uses ceaselessly to try to promote his way of seeing the world?

Mr. Robie makes much of the appointment of staff to our very successful and productive regional secretariat.

We are appalled by Mr. Robie’s bitter personal attack on the head of our secretariat, Nina Bolaitamana Ratulele.

Contrary to Mr. Robie’s bizarre claims, Ms. Ratulele was appointed by the PINA executive board to head the PINA Secretariat. This was after the position was widely advertised and a short list of candidates personally interviewed by board members.

At the time of her recruitment by PINA, Ms. Ratulele was working for the region’s biggest magazine publishing group, Islands Business International.

She was judged by the PINA executive board members to be highly qualified for the PINA Administrator’s position. This was because of her administrative as well as journalistic skills and her wide knowledge and experience of the region PINA serves.

Contrary to Mr. Robie’s claims, Ms. Ratulele has extensive experience as a journalist, including reporting for Pacnews long before any of the current Pacnews staff worked at Pacnews. She has also participated in a wide range of journalism training programs.

Her work running and developing the PINA Secretariat and as founding editor more recently of PINA Nius Online has been consistently recognized by PINA’s members. This came most recently in October at the 2001 PINA convention in Madang, Papua New Guinea. Ms. Ratulele has also been honored internationally.

This has included being awarded the International Green Pen Award for Environmental Journalism; elected chairperson of the council of IFEX, the network of all the world’s leading media freedom organizations; and deputy chairperson of both the Council of Asia-Pacific Press Institutes and Asia-Pacific Forum of Environmental Journalists.

Mr. Robie seems to have problems accepting that a Pacific Islander — and a woman at that — can be successful.

PINA has a dedicated and highly qualified team in its regional secretariat, which is headed and run by Ms. Ratulele.

Under the overall direction of PINA’s elected executive board Ms. Ratulele and her team play a key daily role making PINA the most active and successful regional news media organization. They serve PINA’s members throughout the region.

We hope Mr. Robie’s endless “farewells” are now finally over and we can get on with getting ahead. We especially look forward to rebuilding a positive and mutually beneficial relationship with the USP journalism program.

We have been especially heartened by the efforts of Savenaca Siwatibau to strengthen links with the region’s news media since his appointment as Vice Chancellor.

We must very wary of Peter Lomas and Fiji Sun crusade against March Edge – readers this is what Robie had to say about Lomas:

The settling of old scores would not seem to account sufficiently for the venom of it, and Robie says PINA’s “jobs for qualified Pacific Islanders” mantra is not credible, considering that the PINA secretariat is run by Lomas, a New Zealander who has taken a Fiji passport, and his common law wife Nina Ratulele, who was hired as PINA Nius editor and administrator without any experience in journalism.

God help us from this white fellas fighting to tell us who among them is the best to represent us!

Mr Davis, I am not sure how this discussion got turned into something about Peter Lomas, the publisher of the Fiji Sun.
I am sure the very experienced and successful Mr Lomas is able to defend himself if he even bothers.
But I come back to my original point.
The anti-types from the Fiji Times who normally hang out at Coup 4.5 seem to have arrived on Grubsheet.
It is well known that they hate the Fiji Sun because of how since Mr Lomas became the publisher it has ended the Fiji Times domination of the Fijian news media. They also have bad feelings about you because you are pro-Bainimarama Government and write in the Fiji Sun,.
Anyone who reads the Fiji Times, and I agree with you that a lot of people now don’t, will know the Fiji Times are linked with Mr Edge because they promote him in their pages.
Please keep the spotlight on Mr Edge and the problems his students now face, which is the real issue here.

This gentleman should go over to Australia and try and teach Indigenous students-he will have no one in class! One can understand his frustrations with the way students turn up late etc but one also needs to acknowledge the ways of the Pacific people. Pity he must have come to Fiji with his ideas of liberating us from the Pacific Way-thats easier said than done! Send him home! I am suprised that he is still intact-appears the students at USP have mellowed.

Looks like Dr Marc Edge is thriving in the controversy. He seems to be going out of his way to deliberately create problems for himself. Maybe he is courting controversy to get more material for his upcoming bestseller by engineering his own sacking and expulsion. Methinks this is a very clever Doctor Marc using USP, the students and Grubsheet as his pawns.

Sunshine, Checkmate and others. I think all those who have gone for Peter Lomas are not against him per see but are saying that there is a perennial problem with the running of the USP School of Journalism. In David Robie’s case, he himself claims that it was none other than Peter Lomas who had orchestrated his (Robies) departure from Fiji. Others are pointing out to that Canadian fella that we have been on that road before – Graham Davis says Marc Edge is self-promoter; Robie was accused of the same, and all other accusations thrown at Marc was thrown at Robie. Personally, his premature turned out to be a blessing for Robie and others – including Ranjit Singh and New Zealand – he set up a successful journalism school.

I do not know the relationship between Marc and his students but I dont accept that it is Pacific Way to come to class if and when one feels like – he has a point – journalism is literature in a hurry and very first draft of history – and punctuality and “first” on the scene begins in the journalism school – why even hold lecture at 9am if the students have decided that they will not attend class because either they are checking their e-mails, chatting with friends or having coffee in Suva city centre – no, it is not Pacific Way, it is The Lazy Way.

Fiji Sun is surviving because since the 2006 coup it is getting all the Government advertisements, which is a form of press subsidy.

As for Chand, what is your first name – you are very quick to abuse anybody who dares to disagree with you – if you are who you claim – fearless – and challenge others to identify yourselfves – keep your full name and e-mail address – for there are millions of Chand around the world – I hope you are not Parmesh Chand, the former PS in Prime Minister’s Office inhabiting cyberspace and abusing all and sundry – and I am not a Fiji Times or C4/5 supporter – even if I was for argument sake – it has nothing to do with the attack on this Canadian fella Marc – as others have argued here – it seems from Robie, Graham, down, we are being told what sort of journalist or journalism is best for us.

Graham has outed himself has a part-time advisor to Qorvis Communications, who instead of relying on local journalists are paying over $1million to Qorvis to polish up their image – a company whose clients include tyrants and dictators around the world.

Graham, when did you become a part-time advisor to Qorvis communication – for too long those in the journalism world suspected you were attached to Qorvis – its September but as far back as July someone on Fiji Today had hinted about your link with Qorvis:

Panic in the VB camp

Graham Davies, the hired columnist for the regime, is working overtime – we believe for a lucrative reward- to profile the beleaguered Voreqe Bainimarama in preparation for 2014.
Davis is the regime’s official voice now, replacing PS Information Sharon … found to be ineffective in the role. Graham’s rewards come from the Fiji Sun and Qorvis Communications – the Australian Taxation Office needs to have a look at his earnings of late.

As for VB, Graham, he is a non-starter for 2014 – if you know how the people regard him. The Fijian people will not buy your ravings and ranting. They have made up their own minds. Just wait and see. The rate at which you are churning out pre-regime rubbish, Graham, is indicative of the panic in the VB camp. People ridicule you and the Fiji Sun and they will keep on laughing all the way to 2014 when they will celebrate BIG. But who knows they may celebrate the fall of the dictator even earlier than 2014.

Why accuse Marc of self-publicity – your Lindelink galores that you are a columnist for Fiji Sun and that you went to Newington College – Newington College is an independent, Uniting Church, day and boarding school for boys, located in Stanmore, an inner-western suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Established in 1863 at Newington House, Silverwater, the college is open to boys of all faiths and denominations. Since 1922 Newington has been governed by an Act of Parliament.

Your own successful forary into journalism world – tv – is ample proof that one does not need to come out of journalism school – unless you are telling me at Newington College is some sort of School of Journalism at USP

That Mark fella should pack his bags and go – and like Robie – will one day be invited back to Fiji to tell us what sort of journalism and journalists are best for the Pacific – The Lazy Way types, presumably!

Media Consultant, I have just become a consultant to Qorvis and your claim that this goes back to May is absolute nonsense. The item you cite is a complete fabrication. I have been completely transparent about this. I host a TV program in Australia every week and have begun working part time for Qorvis. End of story.

There is a mental disease about Oliver Cromwellian type of calls for “GO” – Deportation etc when it comes to disagreements – if Chand and Graham dont like any comments, they shout – go back to C4/5 – and now Graham is telling Marc to go; Robie was told to pack and go by none other than Peter Lomas, who himself was told by Fred Caine to pack and go for allegedly inciting racial hatred in Fiji in 1980s; its time we STOPPED this calls for “GO, GO, GET OUT OF FIJI”

SUPREME COURT OF FIJI

PETER ANTHONY LOMAS

-v-

FREDERICK CAINE

[SUPREME COURT, Kermode, J.-8 February, 1980]

Civil Jurisdiction

A. Singh with Anil Singh for Plaintiff
V. Parmanandam for Defendant.

Action for Slander in respect of words spoken at the Tradewinds Convention Centre, Lami. Discussion of meaning of fair comment, plea of justification, aggravation. Onus on defendant. Accusation of racial hatred defamatory.

Held: An accusation of racial hatred was defamatory

Case referred to:

Digby v. Financial News Ltd. (1907) 1 K.B. 509.

KERMODE, J.

JUDGMENT

This is an action for slander although the indorsement on the writ of summons states the claim is for damages for libel. The indorsement and the statement of claim make it clear however that the plaintiff complains about words allegedly spoken about him and published by the defendant at the Tradewinds Convention Centre Lami.

It is not in dispute that the plaintiff was at all material times a journalist employed by the Fiji Sun newspaper.

Nor is it disputed that the defendant at a meeting of the Alliance National Council to which members of the public and the press were admitted, spoke and published of the plaintiff the following words:

“……Some of the people who write these articles should he sent out of this country. And I’ve got to mention the man’s name and that is this Peter Lomas and a few American Peace Corps who have sowed the seed of hatred in the sport of basketball. And I found out in other sports that this particular author has also caused racial hate in rugby in football and professional boxing. I was more than insulted of this recent scrap between Mundine and Fossie Schmidt of Samoa. You should have been there to see the reaction. I wasn’t there but someone who saw (laughter) came and said ‘hey, you Samoan.’ (Laughter) You save how Fossie Schmidt ran out of the scrap to his dressing room. It’s the way the article was written accusing the Australian aborigine that he’s got a glass jaw. And now there’s a division amongst the Samoans in the Western Division. This type of example we must stamp out and get rid of people who do indirect create this.”

The evidence discloses there was a meeting of the Alliance National Council at the Tradewinds Convention Centre on the 5th August 1978. Amongst others who were present at the meeting were the Prime Minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, the Deputy Prime Minister, Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau, the Minister for Labour and Immigration, Ratu David Toganivalu and other ministers and former ministers and prominent supporters of the Alliance Party.

At the time when the defendant addressed the meeting and spoke the words the plaintiff complains about, the subject under discussion was the promotion of racial harmony in Fiji, which is without doubt a matter of public interest.

The defendant’s defence is that the words were fair comment on a matter of public interest namely the promotion of multi-racial harmony in Fiji and further that the words were true in substance and fact.

In his defence, the defendant gave particulars of the facts on which he relied in support of his defence of justification. The particulars areas follows:

“Particulars

(a) That over the period between December, 1977 till August, 1978 the Plaintiff has written a series of articles which have caused concern in that it has tendered to put one racial group up against another and thereby generating a feeling of hatred amongst the groups in question.”

There is no doubt that the defendant was referring to the plaintiff when he spoke at the meeting and that the words were spoken of the plaintiff in relation to his profession as a journalist. The plaintiff is specifically named and there is reference to “people who write these articles”.

The plaintiff is singled out as one of those people.

The attack on the plaintiff was quite a vicious one. He was accused of sowing “the seed of hatred”, which in the context of the words and the subject under discussion can only mean sowing the seed of racial hatred and that he had caused hatred in shorting circles.

I hold as a fact that the words are defamatory of the plaintiff and calculated to injure the plaintiff in his profession as a journalist or employment as a journalist by the Fiji Sun.

The plaintiff is entitled to damages unless the defendant can succeed on his defences of fair comment and justification.

Subject to section 16 of the Defamation Act 1971 the defence of fair comment must be based on facts truly stated. The comment must not contain imputations of corrupt or dishonourable motives on the person whose conduct or work is criticised save in so far as such imputations are warranted by the facts. The comment must also he the honest expression of the persons making the comment.

Section 16 of the Defamation Act 1971 has not altered the law that fair comment is a defence to comment only. The effect of the section is that the defendant will not fail in his defence of fair comment if he is unable to prove the truth of every allegation of fact if the expression of opinion is fair comment having regard to such of the facts as are proved. Where there is any defamatory meaning in any of the facts on which comment is based a defendant must plead and prove a justification.

So far as a plea of justification is concerned as Collins M.R. said in Digby v. Financial News Ltd (1907) 1 K.B. at p. 509 “a plea of justification means that all the words are true and covers not only the bare statements of facts in the alleged libel but also any imputations which the words in their context may be taken to convey.”

In pleas of both fair comment and justification the burden of establishing the defence is on the defendant.

The facts stated by the defendant in the words he used are the following:

1. The plaintiff had sowed the seed of hatred in the sport of basketball.

2. He had caused racial hate in rugby, football and professional boxing.

These alleged facts were alleged to be the result of articles the plaintiff was alleged to have written. If the defendant establishes that these facts are true his comment on them, if fair, would be fair comment on a matter of public interest and he would succeed on his defence of fair comment and justification.

The defendant gave evidence and sought to establish his defences. He made no effort to produce any article written by the plaintiff but sought to give evidence about trouble which had erupted after articles had been published in the Fiji Sun. There was no evidence that the plaintiff had written those articles. No doubt the defendant expected to establish his defences through cross-examination of the plaintiff and his witnesses.

In view of the admissions made in the Defence, the plaintiff in the discretion of the Court was allowed to reserve his answer to the plea of justification. He gave no evidence, relying on the admissions, and did not find it necessary to give evidence in rebuttal of the defendant’s evidence.

I am satisfied that the matter being discussed at the Alliance National Council meeting was a matter of public interest but the defendant has failed to establish his defences of fair comment and justification. Not only has he failed to prove the truth of the facts he stated in his address to the Council he has not even sought to establish that the plaintiff wrote any articles which could have caused racial hatred. What was required was production of the alleged articles which would have enabled the Court to determine whether they were capable of creating racial hatred.

It is not sufficient for the defendant to express his views on articles published in the Sun which may or may not have been written by the plaintiff and relate that there was a fight between two sporting teams at a night club and that a Fiji Sun report was involved and that a Sun reporter named Maika had been assaulted and died as a result. Nor does evidence that the plaintiff was in danger of being assaulted at an inter-district basketball tournament at Easter 1978 assist the defendant. He pleaded but did not attempt to prove that the plaintiff had written a series of articles that tended to create racial trouble between groups of people.

The plaintiff succeeds in his claim and is entitled to damages and the question is what is the measure of the damages.

The defendant’s comments were a vicious unjustified slander of the plaintiff in his profession as a journalist. The plaintiff is the sports editor of the Sun and an expatriate and the remarks were made in the presence of the Minister responsible for Immigration who would be concerned whether the plaintiff could remain in Fiji. The defendant advocated that persons who wrote in the manner the plaintiff was alleged to have written should be sent out of the country.

The Defendant is a Member of Parliament and his utterances would carry more weight with people whom he addressed than the words of some nonentity. In the main, the persons the defendant addressed his remarks to were prominent members of Parliament before whom no doubt he had been in the habit in the past of speaking in Parliament. It appears to me that the defendant forgot he was not in Parliament at the time he made the comments where he could with impunity make statements of the nature he made without fear of court action. He chose to make the remarks in public outside Parliament and this action has been the result.

He was ill advised to seek to justify the defamatory remarks and has maintained that attitude even at the hearing of this action. He has thereby aggravated the damage done to the plaintiff’s reputation as a journalist.

This is an action for slander. The words spoken of the plaintiff were not spoken in sudden anger but deliberately in a speech before an influential body of people. There was not a large number of people present at the time-the approximate number was between 30 and 50 persons. Had I been dealing with a libel, which is of a permanent form and if published in a newspaper would be widely disseminated the injury done to the plaintiff could have been more substantial.

The publication was to a small body of people of influence. While the printed record or the spoken words does not convey the manner in which the words were spoken they no doubt conveyed to those who heard them that they were the comments of a politician who was overborne by personal feelings to such an extent as to make some of his comments barely intelligible. I confess I am quite unable to follow the remarks of the defendant in reference to the Mundine Fossie Schmidt boxing fight and how those remarks bolstered his statement that the plaintiff by his articles created racial hatred in sport. Nevertheless, the offending remarks referring to the plaintiff were explicit.

Damages awarded in libel actions are of little assistance when it comes to considering damages for slander. The written word can cause more injury than the spoken word and in some quarters it is believed that the spoken word can cause little injury. That is not the view of the law, which in cases such as the instant one presumes general damages flow from such a slander.

In a multi-racial society like Fiji harmonious relations between races is essential to good government. Government has legislated to ensure that good relations shall be maintained. Section 17(1)(a)(i) of the Public Order Ordinance 1969 makes it an offence to incite racial dislike or hatred by means of words spoken or intended to be read. The defendant’s words went further than stating the plaintiff was inciting racial hatred, he stated as a fact that the plaintiff by his articles had caused racial hatred.

While this is not a libel action the defamatory statements were of a serious nature and calls for an award of substantial damages.

I assess the damages at $1,000. The defendant is to pay the costs of this action.

We specifically asked whether Dr Edge – as a USP academic – received any personal benefit or consideration from the owners of the apartment block in exchange for a blatant commercial plug. He’s consistently refused to provide us with an answer to a question we regard as one of journalistic ethics. And when we repeated that question yesterday, his response was a succinct “drop dead”.

Again, wasn’t poor David Robie, fallen in the same deep viper infested hole in Fiji:
USP refused to be bullied and went ahead with the appointments, but the Rabuka Government nevertheless delayed issuing the work permits for both Robie and fellow appointee Ingrid Leary, leading the Journalism Students Association to deliver a petition to Rabuka saying: “As students we are gravely concerned that the university’s academic independence appears to be compromised by outside influences”.

Though Robie eventually got his work permit, those “outside influences” apparently refused to give up. Later that year, the Fiji Times reported that the government was investigating “complaints” that Robie was breaching his work permit by publishing articles outside USP. It was referring to his website Café Pacific, which Robie had set up as an educational project at the University of Technology in Sydney in 1996 and continued to run as a hobby.

SVT senator Filipe Bole even raised the issue in the House and for a few weeks it was uncertain whether Robie and Leary’s work permits would be revoked.

Gosh, the coupist Bole is now in the interim Government, and no wonder Robie allowed Ranjit Singh’s highly questionable thesis to be passed – an inquiry and attack on Fiji Times contents from 2000 etc

Graham Davis says:

Matters have since come to a head after Dr Edge failed Ms Tingal in her course. English is Ms Tingal’s third language after Kanak and French and her supporters argue that Dr Edge should have taken that into account. Instead, he evidently marked her to “English as a first language” standard. The episode has caused intense consternation on campus and embarrassed the USP. What was meant to be an exercise in building links between Anglophone and Francophone neighbours, and between the university and the FLNKS, has instead ended in acrimony.

Poor Tingal – she should have gone to a French-speaking journalism school – full stop!

His critics are probably delighted that he has gone, but does that mean the ugly machinations will disappear? Sadly, probably not, for it seems that as long as there are personal fiefdoms to defend within the regional media — and donors willing to fund them — there will always be someone new to attack.

The above is from an earlier posting on this site but it is still true – let’s hope Graham Davis who is close to the illegal regime is not the new “Fred Caine” against Marc Edge – for both Graham and Peter Lomas and Fiji Sun have the regime’s ears – hi Canandian fella keep your suitcase packed and ready – as the vultures circle around you

No one is attacking Peter Lomas – these white fellas, Lomas, Robie, Edge and Davis have been attacking each other for too long – and that is we should be wary of Graham Davis-Davis Robie-Peter Lomas-Marc Edge nexus – especially David Robie who has re-invented himself as the “guru” of Pacific journalism:

PACIFIC ISLANDS REPORT

Pacific Islands Development Program/East-West Center
With Support From Center for Pacific Islands Studies/University of Hawai‘i

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

September 20, 2002

RE: PACIFIC MEDIA “GATEKEEPERS”
CONDEMNED AT AUSTRALIA CONFERENCE

I have no interest in getting into a debate with David Robie, whose latest nonsense you publish in “Pacific Media ‘Gatekeepers’ Condemned At Australia Conference” (PIR, 19 September 2002).

Our Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) president Johnson Honimae and former president William Parkinson recently wrote to you about earlier Robie nonsense you published.

The reason I am writing is the nasty slurs on brave people in the Solomon Islands news media made in this latest “story” circulated by Robie’s so-called Pacific Media Watch.

These are in the claims by Robie’s former pupil, Duran Angiki, described as a “Solomon Islands journalist in exile.”

Angiki attacks the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation (SIBC) and Solomon Star newspaper and the courageous people who lead these organizations.

What the so-called Pacific Media Watch’s “story” does not say is:

§ Angiki was sacked by the Solomon Star because of continuing problems over the standard of his reporting. The SIBC will not employ him for the same reasons, even though Angiki’s uncle – veteran journalist Dykes Angiki – was, until his recent retirement, SIBC’s deputy general manager.

§ While Duran Angiki flew off into so-called “exile”, brave people at the SIBC and Solomon Star stayed in Honiara. They stayed and kept the people informed despite constant threats and very real personal danger.

§ Malaitan news media people in Honiara have been assaulted and property damaged by Malaitan ex-militants.

§ Gutsy SIBC and Solomon Star journalists have revealed how much Sir Allan Kemakeza paid himself for what he said was lost property.

§ Journalists who continued working for the people through the toughest times have revealed such things as Cabinet payments to the former Malaita Eagle Force.

§ The SIBC and Solomon Star, meanwhile, continue to be harassed and threatened by former militants trying to intimidate them.

The courage of SIBC general manager Honimae, Star publishers John and Cathy Lamani, and the men and women they lead at SIBC and the Star was last year recognized by their peers throughout the region.

SIBC and the Lamanis were presented special awards during the PINA convention organized by the Media Council of Papua New Guinea.

The citations for these said:

Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation: “for true dedication to public service broadcasting, helping the people throughout the Solomon Islands during the ethnic conflict and the Honiara takeover and coup. They did this despite many and intense pressures on the corporation and the people who work for it and while many other institutions of Solomon Islands society collapsed around them.”

John and Cathy Lamani: “for national media leadership throughout the Solomon Islands ethnic conflict, maintaining vigorous publication of the Solomon Star and helping provide stability while many other institutions of Solomon Islands society collapsed around them. They did so despite enormous pressures on them both and despite constant efforts to intimidate them.”

I’ve visited Honiara regularly as part of PINA’s continuing efforts to show support for the brave men and women of the Solomon Islands news media.

I’m constantly impressed by their professionalism, courage, fairness, and dedication to informing all Solomon Islanders despite the many real dangers.

Ditto for their determination to keep going and keep serving and informing the people despite the deepening economic crisis, and the impact this has on their organizations.

The Solomon Islands news media do an extraordinary amount of courageous good working every day in circumstances few Australians or New Zealanders understand.

It’s a pity Australian academics like those at Sydney’s University of Technology do not invite genuine heroes like these Solomon Island men and women to speak at their conferences.

If they did it would help better inform Australians about the real story.

Mr Davis, I see someone is still trying to attack Mr Lomas instead of talk about the real issue you wrote about. I am sure it is the same person using several different names.
I strongly believe some anti-Voreqe Bainimarama people at the Fiji Times really hate Mr Lomas because of the way he lifted the Fiji Sun up to pass the Fiji Times and become the biggest paper in Fiji.
I do not know Mr Lomas personally but I admire what he is doing and how he had the courage to support the Prime Minister’s work to build a better Fiji even though he became a target of some vicious anti-Government people because of this.
I saw the Fiji Times and Fiji Sun yesterday and the Fiji Sun had 44 more pages than the Fiji Times. Anyone who is looking at both papers with their eyes open can see it is not just the Government which is supporting the Fiji Sun and what Mr Lomas is doing.
This is a new Fiji and the people who dominated in the old Fiji should accept that things have changed and there is no going back to the bad old ways.
I am a regular reader of the Fiji Sun and I can see they also support the USP School of Journalism by publishing their newspaper and during Mr Edge’s conference there was a special issue included in the Fiji Sun about this.
My humble request is for the hater here to address the real issue you have raised which is the problems the students there now seem to be facing.

I am sorry to say to you both, Chand and Sunshine, that you are not sophisticated enough to follow the debate – what these chaps are saying, if I understood them correctly, that the USP school of journalism has been a playground of opposing forces – in Robie’s days it was none other than Peter Lomas and a few others who led the campaign to oust Robie from Fiji; and sadly, Graham and others are repeating it – with that stupid Canadian fella behaving badly. We dont need trained journalists – we dont need a bloody journalism school – and all these white fellas – Fiji Sun was doing well even before Lomas arrived on the scene

Review Commentator, there is a deluge of ancient history being dumped here in a clear attempt to muddy the waters and deflect attention away from the central issues at USP.

I know both Peter Lomas and David Robie personally and any disagreement between them belongs in the past. I also know from conversations with both men that they share a deep concern about the future of journalism in Fiji.

What I find offensive is your racist jibe about not needing “white fellas” in the Fiji media. If I said we don’t need “black fellas” all hell would break loose. It’s high time for you to unburden yourself of the chip on your shoulder about white people and shake off the intellectual straight-jacket of leftist rants about neo-colonialism. Certainly neither have improved the quality of the local media.

This reminded me of the village monkey, having broken into the home and standing in front of the mirror and thus declaring…..”look at that fellow, look at that fellow, holding his dick with his right hand while I am holding with my left hand……I guess he is not as sophisticated as I am”…..let the sophisticated “commentator review” why the monkey is moving his hand back and forth……need I say more about sophistication…cin cin.

Oh yes, the monkey took the mirror with him when he left the house and was surprised to see the same fellow on the tree looking at him. One day, he decided to get rid of the fellow so his sophistication could not be duplicated. He wanted to be the only monkey with any sophistication so he threw the mirror.

And lo…the monkey was the only one left with any sophistication and so continued his charade with his left hand and he lived happily ever after in his tree…

Until one day he decided to come down and found the mirror that he threw sometime back….

Both the Fiji Times and Fiji Sun were the most vibrant newspapers, envy of the South Pacific without the so-called School of Journalism. Coups have destroyed the Fiji media. I have not read what you call heaps of ancient history but I did skim through and find haunting parallels with Robi’es days – Graham, have some shame and restraint – you come across as a see-through petti-coat – hell bent on driving Marc Edge out of Fiji – and stop boasting that you are a columnist of Fiji Sun. Of course, you will sing Peter Lomas praise and if Robie and Lomas have made piece, why cant you make piece with Mark Edge – no, it is not your game plan – your plan seems to be more sinister – to get Edge out and maybe yourself return to Fiji to head the journalism school – so stop lecturing us – yes, so far it is you white fellas who are fighting to shape journalism in Fiji. Frankly speaking, I had never heard your name from Adam until you popped up with your pro-regime columns in the Fiji Sun, which is heavily subsidized through State advertisments

“Review Commentator”, you are quite mad. Why on earth would I want Marc Edge’s job? This smacks of precisely the same paranoia that Dr Edge exhibits so I can only suspect that you are one and the same. Have a nice day, Marc.

Mirror, mirror I feel so miserable, but why do you look so miserable and why do you have a beard like me.
Dear mirror do you think I will see differently if I change my spec and why do you wear the same spec as me.
Mirror mirror, why is Graham so popular and I am so miserable…..and why don’t I have the ( at least a fraction) of intellect of that Chand bloke guy.

Mirror mirror, why can I not resist this doing with my left hand why do you do the same with your right…

So, Mr Part-Time Qorvis adviser – how much are you pocketting every month from the poor of Fiji:

THE Fijian regime of Voreqe ”Frank” Bainimarama has recruited one of Washington’s most notorious lobbyist firms – which has been raided by the FBI and represents repressive regimes in the Middle East and Africa – to help manage its reputation and lobby foreign journalists.

And diplomatic sources believe the firm, Qorvis Communications, may be behind the decision by Commodore Bainimarama to lift the widely condemned public emergency regulations, only to enshrine them in a permanent law.

The company is represented in Suva by a fresh-faced former business journalist, Seth Thomas Pietras, who has been in the country on and off since October. A contract published by the US Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act reveals that in October the Fijian Attorney-General, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, signed a deed with Qorvis worth $US40,000 a month for a year. In return, Qorvis has agreed to provide ”public relations services relating to business and investment to the government of Fiji”.

Marc, please. It’s not pretty when journalists threaten to sue other journalists. You of all people should know that arguing for free speech and then calling in the lawyers when that is exercised isn’t the best lesson someone in your position can give your students.

I can’t speak for the Fiji Sun but idle threats from glass houses don’t scare me. In the time-honoured parlance of the business “we stand by our stories and they will be vigorously defended”.

Of course he is paranoid you don’t go around using fake accounts on facebook spying on your students or anything like that.

Kalpana Kaajal

Posted September 28, 2012 at 12:01 PM

A first year Journalism student.

“I have proof”, if you had attended the JSA meeting then you would have known better that that account belonged to a registered Journalism student.. Stop posting things which you are not 100% sure of.. We were told in the meeting that one student thought it is a fake account, people who do not have better things to do turn to think about things like this. Why be afraid of spying when you know you are not doing anything wrong.

It is about time you get paid for your loyal support for Bainimarama and Khaiyum. It is pleasing to see in this new meritocracy that hard work and arse licking is being rewarded

For transparencies sake you should announce at the top of Grubsheet that you are paid by Qorvis who in turn are paid more than a million dollars a year to create and push propaganda for a dictator. You also need to add it to your articles in the Fiji Sun.

You should also tell us just how long you have been angling for this job and for how long this has influenced your pro Bainimarama stance.

To think you once worked for the BBC world service which has a proud tradition of delivering unbiased news to the repressed people of the world. What would your fellow journalists from the BBC have to say about one of their former colleagues being paid to peddle propaganda for a dictator.

You have sold out. You are a Judas and you can no longer call yourself a journalist.

“Graham is a sell out”, everything about this is transparent. It is listed at the bottom of this piece but it will take several days for our webmaster to add the Qorvis link to “About Grubsheet”. The connection is also being disclosed in the Fiji Sun.

You have written at least 3 articles since you have been employed by Qorvis without acknowledging that you were a paid PR hack and not the independent journalist you claimed to be.

RUMBLINGS AT THE EDGEFEST
Posted on September 5, 2012 | 78 Comments
METHODIST CHURCH OF INTOLERANCE
Posted on September 10, 2012 | 108 Comments
THE LEAP THAT INSPIRED A NATION
Posted on September 12, 2012 | 30 Comments

You are a hypocrite of the worst kind. You proudly write “We were also part of a national panel that reviewed and updated the Australian Journalists’ Code of Ethics in the mid 1990s. So we think we also have a pretty fair idea of what constitutes proper behaviour when it comes to news coverage.”

One of your codes is “Disclose conflicts of interest that affect, or could be seen to affect, the accuracy, fairness or independence of your journalism. Do not improperly use a journalistic position for personal gain.”

You are so like dictator friend, Bainimarama. You make the rules but they do not apply to you.

So you accept money to write propaganda without telling your readers of the change in your circumstances.

But this has gone on longer than just September. When did you first have a conversation with Sharon Smith Johns about being paid?

Well let me remind you. You had that conversation when you were here for your Sky News interview of Bainimarama.

Ever since you have been liaising continuously with her office and even Qorvis to make sure your articles were on message.

This is false and a blatant attempt to smear. I work for Qorvis, not the Fiji Government. Sharon Smith Johns had nothing to do with hiring me. I have made the disclosure. That is the end of the matter.

It has never once been suggested, let alone have I been instructed, to write anything at all in these columns on behalf of Qorvis or the Fiji Government. I write what I write without consulting either. It is a blog, that reflects my own opinions. And there has been nothing secret since well before the 2006 coup about my support for Frank Bainimarama’s multiracial agenda over the racist policies of the government he removed.

There is a strange notion of some kind of conspiracy here. There is none. I have been engaged by Qorvis on a part-time basis to enhance its regional operations. They are global leaders in the communications field and I am proud to join them as a consultant. My work for them has got nothing to do with my blog, which is unpaid work – a hobby. A lot of it gets reprinted in the Fiji Sun, which, incidentally, doesn’t pay me one cent for it.

Now, you could well describe it as a happy confluence of circumstances but what I say in these columns is what I think. I am not told or paid to say it and I think my regular readers will know that I’ve held these opinions now for more than six years.

I’d suggest that anyone who thinks otherwise read the following article published in The Australian in November 2006 almost two weeks before the coup.

It was five years before I’d ever heard of Qorvis and five years before Marc Edge arrived in Fiji. It shows that I have been remarkably consistent in my support for a multiracial Fiji, a cornerstone of the Bainimarama Government’s agenda. So the notion that my views would be influenced by some kind of financial arrangement now is illogical and absurd. It hasn’t happened and it won’t.

If Edge was a good teacher then perhaps you would be able to read and make out that this article is all about how he lost it completely when the Dean forced him to stop locking students out. Perhaps you should consider learning from someone who can teach you basic reading and understanding skills.

RE: the comment denigrating the issues of neo-colonialism as another “leftist rant” is quite ill-informed. The comment itself is a red-herring, wrapped in the false left-right paradigm.

I do believe that Qorvis financial relationship with Graham is a pertinent issue, considering that Graham did ask Marc Edge and Fiji Times about disclosures about the Apartment article in the Fiji Times, in earlier posts.

At this point, all readers should take everything with a grain of salt and exercise critical thinking.

I guess NO ONE seems to be taking heed of Mr. Edge’s constant reminder that he is here for the purpose of raising Fiji’s Media to international standards. If you’re not a student then you should “take a chill pill”. If you are a student, stop blabbering like a baby. He is just preparing you for the future.

I am sure all the unhappy students are just queuing to speak up after watching poor magalie get victimized by this tyrant. The only thing Edge is raising at USP seems to be mindless students who must follow his way or get out.

Taking heed of raising Fiji’s media to international standards? By the way which country’s standard are we aiming to follow? Australia? USA?

Right now we have adopted the developmental media model which China and Singapore uses. So when you [Media Freedom & Democracy] say to raise Fiji’s standard to international level, which one exactly?

Media mainstream today is better than it was years back, In the past, most of the news covered was on politics and racial issues. Today i am glad we now have human interest stories covered as well. Raising us to international standard? What happened to Online Journalism? It cannot just be blogging. I am sure blogging plays a small part. fijilive.com.fj or fijivillage.com.fj, or fijitimes online must play a role in online journalism. Wansolwara online is it up yet? How long has it been down for?

The authority is smart enough to realize why we cannot have a free press just yet. Freedom House rated Fiji partly-free. For international standard i would rather listen to Professor Hooper who has served in many countries and even in Fiji, and does so with so much humility. Forgive me if i rate the American Professor whose served in Arabic countries at one time rather than take at face value the words of the Canadian whose favorite subject is “how to be condescending and mock Fiji” . Believe it or not there are a few people who have too much patriotism to take shit from a foreigner who has never worked in a newsroom in my country nor have our media laws apply to him as the same as any local journalist.

I believe the local journalists are doing the best they can with the new media decree that is in place and the current climate that we are in. Maybe it will all change in time. Only time will tell.I guess we all have our views on how media mainstream is to operate. Having our views and the reality of things that happen on the ground are two very different things.

Mr Davis, please do not be put off by the anonymous Fiji Times/Coup 4.5 people who are attacking you.
I am one of my many people who read the Fiji Sun every day and admire the international standard of your journalism and the very accurate observations in your columns.
Where I work we always read your column in the Sun in the morning and talk about the issues you raise when we have our morning tea together. You are very thought provoking.
I wish I could put my name to this contribution but that could cause difficulties with the rules of my employers. However, I think those who are attacking you under false names are cowards. You have always put your name to your views.
I also saw in the Fiji Sun that it says quite openly that you are a part-time adviser to Qorvis Communications. I do not understand why this is such a big issue.
Please continue writing in the Sun and contributing to better understanding of the real issues in Fiji today and all the Bainimarama Government’s good work to make our country better.

Graham, I agree with Tom. In what capacity are you advising Qorvis – you are neither employed by the illegal Bainimarama regime nor the Fiji Sun? Is that correct? Who nominated or delegated you to be part-time advisor to Qorvis – is it only on issues concerning Fiji or Qorvis dealings all over the world? Is Fiji Sun paying you for reproducing your articles? Come on, you are a self-seeking publicist – as someone pointed out, we had never heard you from Adam until you did that interview with dictator Frank where he justified the killings of CRW soldiers etc. Again, if you are demanding from Marc to reveal how much he got from that Fiji Times advertorial, than go ahead, and tell us how much retainer you are getting from Qorvis, and where do you keep that fees – in your Fiji or Australian bank account? How much are you paid by Fiji Sun, Qorvis and even the illegal regime – maybe through aunty Nur Bano?

Oh, tell your lackeys on the Fiji Sun to inform the readers that those columns in the Fiji Sun are merely reproduced from your obscure Grubsheet website and if and when they edit your column (which very often happens) they should also inform the public. Independent journalist – ah, ah, ah, ah, a self-publicist journalist, YES! I am told that until lately you were unemployed?

The taste of the pudding is in its eating – no good or bad journalist will be able to make a better newspaper if the editor, publisher and owner kow-tow regime propaganda or live in fear of the dreaded media decree in Fiji.

Why are we wasting our time on Marc Edge and the School of Journalism – those schools will not make you a better journalist – as someone said, that poor Tingali shoud have gone to sharpen and hone her skills in a French journalism school – and if I were an editor and publisher of a Fiji newspaper – I would not take the current crop of to-be-journalists in Marc’s class who are demanding dispensation for coming to classes late etc – for God’s sake, if you dont have bus fare – leave your bloody house at 5pm to be in the class by 9am – lazy lot – we dont want you in the newsrooms – especially those colluding with Qorvis snake and self-publicist Graham Davis

Well, we are exercising our right as requested by Grubsheet – to put our names or be anonymous if one chooses to – lets stick to the debate and that is Graham Davis and his links and payments, if any, from Fiji Sun, Qorvis and the illegal regime

If this Tingal student’s English is “so bad” how the hell was she able to coherently question Marc Edge’s lecture:

Graham Davis writes:

Fellow students report that the feisty Ms Tingal began to question the basis of some of Dr Edge’s lectures. He reportedly responded at first with irritation then disdain and finally barely concealed rage. Matters have since come to a head after Dr Edge failed Ms Tingal in her course. English is Ms Tingal’s third language after Kanak and French and her supporters argue that Dr Edge should have taken that into account. Instead, he evidently marked her to “English as a first language” standard. The episode has caused intense consternation on campus and embarrassed the USP. What was meant to be an exercise in building links between Anglophone and Francophone neighbours, and between the university and the FLNKS, has instead ended in acrimony.

I smell a rat here – it seems this poor woman is being used by David Robie who has extensive contacts with the Kanak world, and is now being manipulated by self-seeking publicist Qorvis advisor Graham Davis – these bloody White fellas will never stop exploiting us, Pacific Islanders.

Bula Mr Davis,
Speaking from a student’s perspective, I think whatever issues any of the students have against Dr Marc should be taken to the relevant authorities. Relevant authorities here is the University itself and the procedure that’s already been put in place to follow should anyone have a complaint. It’s a bit manipulative to take advantage of the bitterness and the anger of students, to fuel your own vendetta against the professor.
True, he doesn’t know much about the Pacific way and he is taking his time learning to acknowledge and appreciate it. True, there have been mishaps with the professor and his students; which all came down to a miscommunication somewhere along the way.
We have had our discussions and we have solved most of our disputes with him.
The incident with the New Caledonia student has been blown way out of proportion and I find it ridiculous that’s it’s been aired here. I know this girl, she is a lovely person and it is true, English is not her first language BUT, there is more to this story than what’s been depicted here. It’s not fair that you’ve put everything here out of context and though it may be an “opinion” blog, I would still have expected a sense of balance and accuracy with the facts.
Dr.Edge is here to set International standards, and is trying to find the balance between what is adaptable for Fiji and what Fiji isn’t ready for. He has turned a lot of heads and opened up a can of worms, but can I just point out that THAT is the role of the media. Is it not the media’s job to open up the table for discussion? Even if the views that’s been thrown on the table is against the government in power?
Anyway, I got a bit carried away there. I would like to beseech you, as a student, not to involve us any further with this. Any other student with problems should go talk to Marc themselves or the head of school. THIS is ridiculous, having things being put up like this and creating all this illusions on what’s really happening. It’s petty and irresponsible on your part and the students.
That is all.
Thank you.

That is journalism. Making people aware of people like Marc and of the plight of his innocent victims like poor magalie. I was there when Sudesh Mishra made Marc take her back into class, I was sitting in class when he put her facebook comments on the big projector and belittled her in that very PS 103 ethics class. I was there afterwards in the newsroom when she was crying because of that class and refused to go back.

I was there too. From what I remembered, he apologized to her. The facebook comments dealt with what we were covering, to do with defamation. Like I said earlier, take it to the relevant authorities, don’t bring it here. Unless you’re talking on your own behalf, don’t say anything. It doesn’t help when people start picking teams.
I’ve had my own share of difficulties in his class so it’s not biased of me to say what I have to say. He is a great professor. Yes, he has no tolerance for island time, he is strict and might come across gruff sometimes, but for goodness sakes, he has people coming at him from all sides. What we don’t need, is for the students to get involved. Leave the big media men to their own wars. Mr Davis doesn’t care about who gets victimized in his class, he just cares about getting even.

A journalists job is to be the voice of the unheard, the unheard in this case being the students who are being bullied. To say graham doesn’t care about students shows that bias exists in your mind rather than his. Do you know graham personally to make such a bold statement? Marc Edge involved the students not Graham Davis. He is simply telling our story.

Student

Posted September 17, 2012 at 5:38 PM

I read what she had to say. She said she’s a big girl and she doesn’t need anyone throwing her into the role of the victim or spreading any rumours. She set some things straight and she mentioned that she was deregistered. That was WHY Marc dropped her. It was because he saw that she had failed twice but it had been an administrative error. The professor apologized and said he was wrong. He also took her back into the program.
Him having “lied” to the class, was a big misunderstanding.
As for the students who are not being “heard”. They have a chance to be “heard”. We had a meeting that reconciled our differences. That was where everyone was supposed to speak out.
They can still do so by going to talk to Marc themselves, or the head of school or if worse comes to worse, the Dean himself.
I keep seeing the words “bullied” and “victimized” but no specifications.
Why did Marc lock the doors? He was trying to stamp out island time. “International standards.” You can’t expect to work overseas, walk in late and say it’s the Pacific way. Students complained though; Marc was told not to lock the doors and everything was SOLVED. Case closed. He never locked the door again. Students who keep bringing this up, please MOVE ON.
The media’s job is to provide the TRUTH. NOT to defame anyone, NOT to attack anyone. The media’s job is to REPORT things accurately and fairly. THIS is an OPINION blog and seeing as you students have the same OPINION as Mr Davis about Marc; you’ve all bundled together into your little anti-edge club. My friend. That is not how the media works.
CLEARLY Mr Davis has an agenda against Dr Edge and if you think otherwise, I’m not sure which rock you’ve been sitting under the last couple of blog posts.
If you have something against Marc, man up and walk into his office to sort it out. Don’t stand behind Mr Davis waving your pom poms.
He isn’t the one who will be teaching us if we lose Marc as our professor. If he cared about the students, he might have thought of that first.

Student

Posted September 17, 2012 at 5:49 PM

” I was sitting in class when he put her facebook comments on the big projector and belittled her in that very PS 103 ethics class.”
It’s JN103. If you were there, you’d remember he apologized and that was when poor Magalie became emotional.

I’m a student in that class. I don’t know who you are, but I think you should stop with that lie already.

Neisau Tuidraki

Posted September 18, 2012 at 10:14 PM

Marc projected her comments up on screen because we were covering defamation that week. I had my back to her and I didn’t see her crying BUT let’s not forget the fact that she was pretty out of control with her comments on FB. She even took a swipe at Drue Slatter being endorsed by JSA for the Hibiscus Festival then she went on to refer to Mai Life as a “Shoe Brand”. I’m sorry but I have no sympathy for Magalie as she chose to air this out in public before following proper channels in USP. Marc apologized to her in class in front of all of us. Should he have projected it up in class…..some say NO it was insensitive but I’m a HELL YES! If you’re gonna run your mouth off in cyber space have the balls to defend it in class and not bitch and whine about it in “forums” and cry in a corner.

Former JSA girl

Posted September 19, 2012 at 1:40 AM

First Farah, now Magalie. Lord knows which other students you have problems with. Perhaps you should look within for the source. Word around your old work place is that you are a huge drama queen who enjoys fighting with people, your actions in USP seems to be agreeing with this theory.

You sound like one naive first year student who believe Marc Edge propaganda about international standards. You must be the one they call marc edge’s boxer. Why you blindly and defending his actions? You are one of his pets as a first year students. He is not hostile towards you as he is towards us. You shut up because you have no idea how marc criticised and demoralised us. We have no respect for marc because he is so petty and he has no confidence. Not like Ian Weber and Robert Hooper who respect us, and we admire them and love them we learn from them. Marc edge class was useles, we just talk aboaut Canada and snow. Boring. There are many personal stories how students have been harassed. You moron first year student just listening to marc. Stop sucking up to marc edge and go and find out. Looks like marc is not teaching you people. He is brainwashing you. You will make a pathetic journalist you sucker. You have no thinking power. Marc don’t like us ’cause we take no shit from him unlike you first years he suck up to you and you suck up to him, what a great learning environment, hahahaha! The discipline is full of problems and marc edge covering up with his bullshit international standards. USP journalism no longer a family because marc divide the students. this has never happened before. Marc’s Edge is poor leader with poor management style and journalism program is a mess. We students just waiting to graduate then you will see true story on the internet blog you moron brainwashed first year.

Student

Posted September 17, 2012 at 9:44 PM

Being a first year journalism student doesn’t make me naive nor is it relevant to what we’re talking about. You call yourself unbiased but you contradicted yourself in this last comment where you’ve brought your antics down to a spoiled little brat who doesn’t seem to comprehend what I’ve been saying. It’s funny and ironic that you’re talking about propaganda considering the blog we’re on. I’m not familiar with the “boxer” comment, but I’m glad you guys are big enough to start labelling people. I thought I put up a fair argument. Though it is defending Marc; someone ought to since you’ve all pulled out pitchforks and torches on him.
I have had issues with Marc, I have had bad grades from him- so I wouldn’t say I’m blindly defending him. What I can say is that I have big enough pants not to whine and complain, rather take it up with him or understand his teaching strategy.

“He is not hostile towards you as he is towards us”
What do you mean hostile? Does he beat you with a broom hostile? He swear at you hostile? Can you be specific? Did he give you a bad grade hostile?
I’ll say this. His class is very difficult, the workload crazy and compared to my other major, he’s so tough on us. What do we do? WE LEARN.
He is so different from my other professors. Yes I’ve been taught by other academics to know that Dr.Edge definitely has a different tactic. So think again before you use the term “naive”.

“We have no respect for marc because he is so petty and he has no confidence.”

This is what it all comes down to. Lack of respect. He is your professor and YOU are the student. Where is the line? Ofcourse it works both ways, but if you’re not willing to perform or respect him, exactly how do you expect him to respect you in return. What do you mean he has no confidence? That makes no sense. Petty? Petty is the word I’d use for you people who won’t just solve all this with Marc and the head of school but instead like to cook up another episode in this ridiculous soap opera.

“Marc edge class was useles, we just talk aboaut Canada and snow. Boring.”
What were you, sleeping in class? Dr Edge does talk about himself and Canada but the stories and his experiences are used to teach us something. There’s always a lesson behind it. You’re so blinded by your BIAS against him, you won’t give him a chance.

“You moron first year student just listening to marc. Stop sucking up to marc edge and go and find out. Looks like marc is not teaching you people.”
Moron first year student? Is that what you learn in class? That’s what you can come up with? No wonder. Yes, I listen to Marc because last I checked his the PROFESSOR, I’m the STUDENT and to learn something in class I have to LISTEN. If I were sucking up to him, I’d have my name posted. What a PETTY comment to make,

“Looks like Marc is not teaching you people.”
Obviously he’s not teaching you, seeing the way you write.

“He is brainwashing you. You will make a pathetic journalist you sucker.”
Yes he is brainwashing me. Infect he has a whole laboratory with brain surgery equipment and he’s actually an alien. I am his zombie slave.
Actually, believe it or not, I have my own mind and my own opinion. It just happens to be, that I think Marc’s an okay guy. As for me being pathetic and a “sucker”, I think that would come under this:

“idea how marc criticised and demoralised us”

You are criticizing me and trying to demoralize me. That makes you a hypocrit.

“Marc don’t like us ’cause we take no shit from him unlike you first years he suck up to you and you suck up to him, what a great learning environment, hahahaha! ”

My goodness. See, when you’re in a classroom, this is how it works: The professor teaches you and you learn. If you need to ask a question, you ask and he will answer. That’s not sucking up. I’m sorry to burst your bubble but, this is how education works.
The fact you don’t take shit from him, is kind of the reason you’re in this predicament. You’re suppose to learn shit.

” USP journalism no longer a family ”
Check again. The third years 2nd years and the first years are pretty tight. If you don’t want to be in the journalism family, that’s all you. Whether or not someone likes Marc is irrelevant to our family. I’m close with all the students, though they may not like Marc. Magalie, I also consider a great friend and I respect her. Don’t speak on behalf of us if you don’t want to be part of our family.

“moron brainwashed first year”
I think this says enough about what kind of person you are. You’re talking out of bitterness and spite, which is what fuels this whole blog post and your vendetta against Marc. You told me to shut up because apparently I don’t know what it’s like to have a tough professor.

WRONG. I have had an unreasonable lecturer last year and now Marc who is stern but thankfully not as bad. For goodness sakes. If you think you have a good case about Marc, take it up to the university but if you’re just whining like a little kid, don’t bother fanning the flames and stop picking teams.

Just talk. Comprimise. Talking. That will solve everything. Not this. Okay?

Student

Posted September 17, 2012 at 9:47 PM

in fact*

Student

Posted September 17, 2012 at 9:51 PM

in fact* compromise*

John Smith

Posted September 18, 2012 at 1:06 AM

Amusing how the student admitted to being first year. It seems to be general knowledge that the poor first years are brainwashed or something?

student

Posted September 18, 2012 at 1:31 AM

I don’t see your friends in a hurry to support you poor 1st year. If you had actually followed this Saga from the rock that YOU live under you would realize that Edge started this whole thing when he gave a cowardly interview to radio Australia. Canada probably isn’t the best country you want your standards set to.

Brainwashed moron

Posted September 18, 2012 at 7:06 AM

Poor first year student. Looks like Marc Edge was nice to you, and you ready to defend him to the death. He can do no wrong for you. You are totally blind to his massive screw ups. marc is nasty, petty, spiteful and vindictive, a bully. That is many students experience. But for you it is all our fault, not nice Dr Marc Edge. No use talking to you. You are brainwashed totally!

*shaking my head in disgust*

Posted September 18, 2012 at 9:24 AM

I liked the “You shutup” part. js saying

*shaking my head in disgust*

Posted September 18, 2012 at 9:39 AM

Honestly.
Dear 1st year’s…. lets not hit our heads on stone ! It’s no use arguing with a fool. They will bring you down to their level and beat you down with experience !!!

btw, I so know who you all are commenting here. whether 1st year or 2nd !! great job 1st year’s. We need Marc Edge to teach us that’s all. I actually love my JN classes. Lets pray he does not leave us. Because he will be able to move on but we won’t. Our studies will be affected. We are blessed to be taught by Marc. Atleast two more till we graduate… till then…request to Marc sir…. kerekere… do not leave us till then hehe.

All other crap is just crap. People let our professor and us in peace !!!

cheers

Student

Posted September 18, 2012 at 2:50 PM

There’s a meeting coming up soon. Write up your lists of grieviances, go to the meeting and sort it out. You have a big and sharp mouth here, so I’d like for you to use it and do some good.
All this, “oh the poor first years” crap is not doing anyone any good. For your information, half the first years were taught by Ian Webber last semester. Did they break into Team Webber and Team Edge? No. For your information AGAIN, we have an exchange student with us who is both apalled and disgusted by you and your company’s conduct and attitude.
He said himself that Edge is just like any normal American or Canadian professor.

I guess though you’re right. We shouldn’t be open to accepting ideas from countries that are more advanced, economically, politically and development wise because let’s face it. Fiji is right up there with them. We don’t need other foreigners coming in with their foreign ways, because right now WE’RE at the top of the world.

If this is the way you think, I suggest you change career paths. You want to be a journalist? You’re supposed to have a critical mind, one that is open to new ideas, be critical of it and most important, learn from it. The passing and recieving of information is the most integral part of journalism. Keeping the facts accurate. Keeping to the truth and being…wait for it… OBJECTIVE.

YOU are not being objective. Your comments and replies have gotten down right personal that I think it’s time we all get together and sort this out. Stop being so narrow minded. Good God! I can’t believe it takes a 1st year student to have to be telling you this.

Edge was not “nice” to anyone, nor does he show “Favouritism”. He has been fair to all of us AND yes, there WERE issues in the past but that’s over and done with.

You keep saying he is victimizing you but exactly what are you referring to? Stop being lazy! Stop being a whiny baby!

John Smith, I don’t see what’s amusing about admitting I’m a first year. You guys should be ashamed. The first years are showing you up!

“””That is many students experience. But for you it is all our fault, not nice Dr Marc Edge. No use talking to you. You are brainwashed totally!””””

Many students experience? Well, that’s great evidence. Very solid statement you have there.
Why don’t THEY speak out hmm? Or have they lost their ability to speak for themselves? Guess what, if you want to be a journalist, that’s sort of the kind of trait you need. Again, it shouldn’t be a 1st year having to tell you this.

Again with the brainwashing comment.

You poor immature person you. We have mature working students in our class who have families, we have a foreign exchange student, we have new high school graduates and students doing other majors. We have strong-minded individuals in our class. We have such a variety; people with various ideas and opinions. You CAN’T say that we have been brainwashed just because we are mature enough to be able to sort our differences with Marc, with the school and with each other.

*Shaking head in disgust* is right. There is no talking to you. You never learn and it seems, you don’t want to.

Here’s a bit of reality for you. Marc is NOT Robie, Webber or Hooper. If one professor differs from the others, that’s NOT means enough to complain. You change, you adapt and you LEARN. Don’t you want to graduate? It’s not supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to be tough.

Marc has apologized for everything he might have done that could have caused offence to anyone. I thought we had this ALL solved.

Obviously some of you are JUST NOT BIG ENOUGH to forgive, forget and MOVE ON. You’re like a bunch of high school girls…a hundred times worse.

Get yourself to the meeting and get things done. Going anonymous troll on here helps no one.

Neisau Tuidraki

Posted September 18, 2012 at 10:28 PM

So the first years are “Brain washed morons”! What are you all of 12 yrs old!? You sound like a momma’s boy that got spanked by Marc Edge and is crying in a corner. I am a mature first year student and I can tell you I’ve locked heads with Marc on occasion (When I first got admitted into the program) and he is super harsh with me when he’s marking me but I know when I’m right and I’m wrong and I also know when I can learn from him. We need to get back to learning that’s what we’re here for. We are not brain washed morons we’re just smarter because we actually resolve our issues with Marc in person and do not air our dirty laundry out for everyone to see. If you’ve got the balls I’ll see you at the JSA meeting this Friday, stand up and let me know it’s you so we can sort this out.

Uncle Tom shows his ignorance when he tries to belittle Graham Davis.
Graham is a renowned reporter who has won Australia’s top journalism prize, the Walkley, and other international TV awards for his investigative reporting. He worked on some of the most watched current affairs TV programmes in Australia and on the BBC overseas.
He has reported from around the world, including in war zones.
But anyone who knows Graham knows he has always maintained close links with the country of his birth, Fiji, and where he spent his early years. He is always in contact with his many friends from Fiji and his Fijian childhood and the Fijian community here in Australia.
Far from being unemployed, Graham has been running his own company Grubstreet Media producing top television programmes for some of Australia’s biggest companies and industry bodies.
He also hosts his own political affairs television show with the Southern Cross network. Called The Great Divide, it shows in 30 markets across Australia.
Unemployed? Hardly. Advising Qorvis? If he is it would be because of his love for Fiji and his continuing concern to counter what he sees as poorly informed news and views on the land of his birth by some in Australia and New Zealand.
Uncle Tom, whoever he is, is more than poorly informed.

I strongly suggest you send this comment to the Fiji Sun’s Letter to the Editor which had reproduced this article as an opinion column in the paper. This man Graham Davis has no moral or ethical respect for confidentiality – he has a habit of revealing intimate details of his discussions with people before consulting them – I feel sorry for this poor Tingal – a pawn in this power-crazy new mini dictator and lieutenant of dictator Frank – as someone wrote, all these chaps from Peter Lomas down are thoroughly corrupt – as David Robie had argued, Lomas had even employed his common law wife Nina, with no journalism background – as Nius editor – its time this Napoleon Graham Davis disappeared from the Fiji Sun pages – he has one track mind – to blindly support Fiji’s current dictatorship. If Peter Lomas refuses to publish your reply, report him to the media authorities under the media decree. It seems that Canadian fella is already consulting his lawyers fro possible defamation, slander and libel against GD (Godly Dictator) of Fiji journalism – Graham Davis

If this Canadian fella did what you allege, go report the White rascal to the USP authorities, and throw him out of Fiji – that is bullying – we dont need him nor Robie nor Graham exploiting us – we Pacific Islanders don’t need to be lectured by this White fellas – and Graham if you thing I am RACIST, so be it!!!! And as for Marc, if you have done what you are alleged to have done, than pack your backs and f—-off from Fiji.

Lets stick to the allegations – as I have indicated, if this Canadian fella did what he did, he ought to be booted out of his job – no sympathy but I also dont support your own modus operandi – you could have quietly told who ever gave you the story to report this mongrel of a man to the USP authorities – and if nothing was done – and he continued to behave like a big WHITE fella with a stick than fair enough, Go for him.

Most people often think of a “Tom” as a sell-out, someone who has benefited from turning their back on the black community in exchange for self-gratification. But for the millions of people out there fluidly throwing around the term, it’s most certain a vast majority of them do not really know who “Tom” is.

E. Ethelbert Miller, Howard University Afro-American Studies Director, says that people forget Tom was a noble character, and it’s true that history has not been kind to him. While he appears happy to be a slave living on the bottom rafters of civilization and thrilled to please his master, the reality could not be further from the truth.

Passive and timid as he appears, Tom is not the old decrepit man we have all come to know. His character, deeply rooted in his Christian faith, finds ways to spread his beliefs everywhere he goes. He stands firm to his convictions when it matters most, protecting slaves who are on the run.

If this poor woman has been treated the way she has been reported to have been treated than “Uncle Tom” – in fact an extension to the earlier commentator TOM that I was responding to (you see now – I attached myself as Uncle to the commentator TOM) and not what you have might out me to be from your urban dictionary – I will stand up and protect this Tingal from all you vultures

I appreciate Graham is an award winning journalist who has had a brilliant career and made lots of money but all that is now behind him. His career is over as a serious journalist because no longer is he seeking out the truth for his readers. He is now paid to manipulate the truth to help keep a dictator in power.

Qorvis are paid over a million dollars a year to promote Bainimarama and his dictatorship. Davis is now being paid by Qorvis to help them promote dictatorship on the South Pacific. Davis got the contract with Qorvis after Smith Johns, the PS of Information, told Qorvis to hire him as a reward for histoadying support.. Davis and Qorvis only push the multiracial agenda because it is the only acceptable facet of Bainimarama. In every other area of human rights he is an abuser.

Get real and understand that every word written from Davis on Fiji from now on will be written to a brief from Qorvis and the Ministry of Information. Every word will now be approved by them.

This is nothing new for Davis as he has been working for them unpaid for a number of months in order to get the contract.

Graham supporter ask yourself this question.
Why would a journalist with integrity ruin his reputation to become a propagandist for a dictator?

“G is a sell out”, I refer to a separate comment that addresses most of the points you make.

1/ Reports of my journalistic demise are grossly exaggerated. I currently anchor a mainstream political discussion program every Sunday on Australian television.

2/ I am a part-time advisor to Qorvis. Sharon Smith Johns had nothing to do with my engagement.

3/ Qorvis do not tell me what to write and neither does the Fiji Government. My blog and the Fiji Sun reprints are my personal views and any alignment is coincidental. I make no apologies for the views I hold.

4/ I have consistently supported the notion of a multiracial Fiji as opposed to the racism of the SDL and have a solid record of having done so stretching back to before the 2006 coup. I have supplied a link to a story I wrote for The Australian in November 2006 that contains precisely the same sentiments I still express.

5/ It is my opinion that I peddle, not propaganda for the regime, Qorvis or anyone else. My views are genuinely held and heartfelt.

So let’s not have any more of this nonsense. It is you who is engaging in propaganda, not me. It is the tactic of the smear, to affect some kind of inside knowledge to peddle misinformation for your own political purposes.

The difference between Grubsheet and Coup 4.5 is that I don’t censor you. And the difference between you and me is that I write under my own name and you cloak yourself in anonymity. The refuge of the coward.

“G is a sell out”, I refer to a separate comment that addresses most of the points you make.

1- Graham I have seen your program and it is a good show. The big difference between your Australian work and your Fijian work is that in Australia you have a wide variety of views on a single topic whereas in Fiji you only allow one point of view and that is the dictator’s. It is inevitable that your reputation will suffer as your colleagues in Australia learn that your paymaster is now the dictator in Fiji. It may be through Qorvis but it is the dictator who pays Qorvis.

2- I think you are nit picking here. She may not have got you the gig but she made the introductions.

3- Forgive me if I no longer believe you. You are now being paid to peddle a dictator’s point of view and Qorvis will expect their money’s worth. Or perhaps you share the dictator’s view that Human rights abuses are perfectly acceptable.

4- I am sure you have, I have held the multiracial view on Fiji from my first concious moments. As my parents were from different races. However my support for a\multiracial agenda has not blinded me to the damage the dictator has caused in Fiji and continues to cause on a daily basis. Running a country is not just about one thing and your paymaster is setting Fiji back decades in terms of economic growth and the rise in poverty..

5- I still don’t believe you. Qorvis are paying you to promote their client’s dictates. Do you see how it works when you accept payment from a dictator; you lose credibility and you can no longer call yourself independent? You can call yourself a hypocritical sell out.

6- Agreed lets have no more of this nonsense. Stop trying to make us believe your are independent when you are clearly not.

7- I would write under my own name if I did not think your mates in green would take me up to the cap for expressing my views. That is the difference between us I have expressed my views and I have been taken to the camp and I have learnt my lesson. That experience only reinforced my views and the lesson I learnt was not to change my views but to express them anonymously. I would also expect you to call me an anonymous coward as that is what you are paid to do.

“G is a sell-out”, Qorvis is a global company and Fiji is only one part of its business. I repeat: I am paid by Qorvis and not the Fiji Government.

I was not introduced to Qorvis by Sharon Smith Johns. One of the company’s senior vice presidents visited me in Sydney several months ago.

As to the rest, you are entitled to your opinion. But I sleep perfectly soundly at night knowing that we are all working to return Fiji to democracy in 2014. And it will be a real democracy, not the sham that Fiji endured before, and one in which every citizen has equal status.

Good morning.
Uncle Tom seems to have trouble understanding English.
Or is he just another of those biased people who are lashing out with no regard to the truth?
I know Peter Lomas and have worked for him twice. I would not consider him a close friend and I have had my own disagreements with him. But I admire what he has done with the Fiji Sun.
I suggest Uncle Tom reads the following letter already put up on this list again before he again attacks Peter’s wife Nina as a way of trying to get at Peter.
If Uncle Tom is having trouble understanding it clearly explains clearly that Nina has had a long and successful career in the news media in her own right, including international recognition. She was working at Islands Business magazine before being appointed to PINA.
Uncle Tom’s claims about her appointment are just lies.
As the former PINA presidents Johnson Honimae and William Parkinson point out in this letter Nina was appointed on merit to run the PINA Secretariat by the PINA executive board. This came after the position was advertised and candidates interviewed.
I do not think Peter has ever been on the PINA board himself.
But the way Uncle Tom keeps diverting from the issues at USP and coming back to racist attacks on Peter and Graham makes me wonder about Uncle Tom and his own background.
The following letter was addressed to Jese Sikivou, who then ran PIBA, the Pacific Islands Broadcasting Association which was competing with PINA back in those days. Thank you.

I have asked that the letter which follows be sent to you following a defamatory attack on PINA, some PINA members, and PINA’s staff by New Zealander David Robie. Mr. Robie is a former coordinator of the University of the South Pacific journalism program who recently left the program before completing his current term. This one-sided report was distributed widely by the Pacific Islands Broadcasting Association (PIBA) through its Pacnews service.

Despite our requests for an opportunity to respond Pacnews has refused.

In the interests of accuracy and fairness I have now asked that the letter which follows be sent to all our PINA members and PINA Nius Online recipients. It is from myself as PINA president and William Parkinson, managing director of leading broadcaster Communications Fiji Limited, as immediate past president.

We regret it is necessary to do this. We are disappointed by the refusal of Pacnews to carry our response and provide accuracy and fairness.

Regrettably, this is not the only time I have had to complain to Pacnews recently over the standard of its journalism.

We are astonished by the seemingly endless “farewell” of New Zealander David Robie from the University of the South Pacific journalism program, and his continuing attacks on people in the regional news media.

His latest comments, carried by Pacnews, are defamatory. Because of this we request that Pacnews – in the interests of accuracy and fairness – distributes this response to all those outlets Pacnews sent the original Robie report.

Contrary to what was reported, Mr. Robie’s hostility to PINA goes back to his involvement in unsuccessful efforts in the 1980s to form a rival to PINA, called the Pacific Journalists Association.

This, unlike PINA, was to be controlled from Australia and New Zealand rather than from within the Pacific Islands.

It failed totally because it was rejected within the Pacific Islands.

It was rejected the same way Mr. Robie’s ceaseless self-promotion and attempts to impose his views on the Pacific Islands news media have been widely rejected. It was rejected in the same way Mr. Robie’s involvement in attempts to prevent Sitiveni Rabuka speaking at the 1991 PINA convention were rejected by PINA’s members.

Mr Robie seems to be blinkered in his belief he knows what is best for the Pacific Islands news media. Rejection of his views has him searching for conspiracies everywhere.

There are no conspiracies. Just a lot of people in the Pacific Islands who do not see the world the same way Mr. Robie does.

For example, he tries to perpetrate the myth that PINA is opposed to the USP journalism program and entry-level journalism education. To support his conspiracy “theory” he totally ignores that the establishment of the USP journalism program was initiated by PINA.

Mr. Robie also perpetrates the myth that PINA opposed his appointment personally.

What PINA did was restate the position of its members from throughout the region’s news media.

PINA members have said it is critically important that qualified Pacific Islands trainers and educators get the opportunity to train and teach in their own region.

That was PINA’s position on the appointment of Mr. Robie and remains unchanged where Mr. Robie’s successor is concerned.

PINA has worked constantly with people like UNESCO to develop and promote the pool of training and education expertise within the region, people who know, understand and have a long-term commitment to the Pacific Islands.

If there are many others in the Pacific Islands news media who in their own right disagree with Mr Robie and his work perhaps Mr Robie should look in a mirror.

Mr. Robie also attacks methods of training in the region and appears to think he is the only one who knows the “modern” way.

He typically ignores, for example, that PINA was heavily involved in establishing and launching the biggest online journalism training program in Asia-Pacific.

Journalists throughout the Pacific Islands have been taking continuing and innovative university-run courses via the Internet alongside colleagues from throughout Asia.

If this is not modern what is?

Mr. Robie also continues to promote his claim that short-form training, such as workshops, is a waste of time and money. PINA members — especially those who actually operate news media organisations — disagree.

They see short-form training also filling a critical role, in advanced journalism training and in training for the many areas of news media work other than journalism.

Unlike Mr. Robie, PINA members have to face the reality of daily operations, producing newspapers and magazines and operating radio and TV stations.

They believe all areas of a news media organization must be well trained, and strong, and not just the journalists. That is if news organizations are to have the resources and strength to do good journalism, and withstand the pressures this can bring.

PINA agrees that in some situations where short form training has been driven by outside interests and not driven by the needs of the Pacific it has been a waste. It is why PINA members feel strongly that more of this training should be conducted by trained Pacific Islands trainers.

Mr. Robie also makes much of transparency and accountability and claims this is lacking in PINA.

PINA is a democratic, transparent and representative organization.

Our members are radio and TV stations, newspapers, magazines, news agencies, journalism schools and national associations of news media practitioners from throughout the Pacific Islands.

PINA’s officers are elected openly by these members in general meetings, according to the PINA constitution.

PINA’s annual accounts are audited by one of the region’s leading accountancy firms and distributed to all members.

PINA’s views are shaped and mandated by its members.

Can the same be said of the so-called Pacific Media Watch organization Mr. Robie has self-created and now uses ceaselessly to try to promote his way of seeing the world?

Mr. Robie makes much of the appointment of staff to our very successful and productive regional secretariat.

We are appalled by Mr. Robie’s bitter personal attack on the head of our secretariat, Nina Bolaitamana Ratulele.

Contrary to Mr. Robie’s bizarre claims, Ms. Ratulele was appointed by the PINA executive board to head the PINA Secretariat. This was after the position was widely advertised and a short list of candidates personally interviewed by board members.

At the time of her recruitment by PINA, Ms. Ratulele was working for the region’s biggest magazine publishing group, Islands Business International.

She was judged by the PINA executive board members to be highly qualified for the PINA Administrator’s position. This was because of her administrative as well as journalistic skills and her wide knowledge and experience of the region PINA serves.

Contrary to Mr. Robie’s claims, Ms. Ratulele has extensive experience as a journalist, including reporting for Pacnews long before any of the current Pacnews staff worked at Pacnews. She has also participated in a wide range of journalism training programs.

Her work running and developing the PINA Secretariat and as founding editor more recently of PINA Nius Online has been consistently recognized by PINA’s members. This came most recently in October at the 2001 PINA convention in Madang, Papua New Guinea. Ms. Ratulele has also been honored internationally.

This has included being awarded the International Green Pen Award for Environmental Journalism; elected chairperson of the council of IFEX, the network of all the world’s leading media freedom organizations; and deputy chairperson of both the Council of Asia-Pacific Press Institutes and Asia-Pacific Forum of Environmental Journalists.

Mr. Robie seems to have problems accepting that a Pacific Islander — and a woman at that — can be successful.

PINA has a dedicated and highly qualified team in its regional secretariat, which is headed and run by Ms. Ratulele.

Under the overall direction of PINA’s elected executive board Ms. Ratulele and her team play a key daily role making PINA the most active and successful regional news media organization. They serve PINA’s members throughout the region.

We hope Mr. Robie’s endless “farewells” are now finally over and we can get on with getting ahead. We especially look forward to rebuilding a positive and mutually beneficial relationship with the USP journalism program.

We have been especially heartened by the efforts of Savenaca Siwatibau to strengthen links with the region’s news media since his appointment as Vice Chancellor.

Why are you attacking Uncle Tom – it is you who dont understand English – he recalled the allegations David Robie had made against Peter Lomas and his wife Nina – so attack that Robie chap – he was the one who rubbished and abused everyone including Lomas and others claiming they drove him out of Fiji

Graham, how much are you paid as a retainer by Qorvis and where are you keeping that fees – in Fiji or Australia – presumably you hold Fiji passport and keep your fat wallet in Australia

Robie says PINA’s “jobs for qualified Pacific Islanders” mantra is not credible, considering that the PINA secretariat is run by Lomas, a New Zealander who has taken a Fiji passport, and his common law wife Nina Ratulele, who was hired as PINA Nius editor and administrator without any experience in journalism.

Graham, you are a two faced hypocrite and confused individual – make up your mind and lay the rules – it is you, you dickhead – who have laid the ground rules for your website

Your Grubsheet tells us:

Please don’t label your return volley “anonymous”. Give yourself a name or pseudonym so that readers can track your progress.

And now, responding to Graham the sell out – you are contradicting yourself:

The difference between Grubsheet and Coup 4.5 is that I don’t censor you. And the difference between you and me is that I write under my own name and you cloak yourself in anonymity. The refuge of the coward.

Mate, get off the whiskey you are drinking at the offering of Qorvis

If you want people to name themselves – than change your policy regarding comments

please allow me to correct few points in your piece.
First, I am not at USP under an agreement with the FLNKS, I applied like any other students, passed the tests and been accepted by USP in 2010 as a mature student regarding my experience but I came to kick off on the second semester of 2011. My radio company changed the training policy as we now looking out other training opportunities over the region.
I think the FLNKS still working on it too but do not settle anything yet.
I never expected any differents treatments as I am a French Speaker, plus, for most of us at USP, English is not our first language.
The reason why he failed me have nothing to do with the French standards or so, otherwise, how would you explain that I am able to pass other units?!
In fact, it’s even worse…. he lied to everyone that I’ve failed ‘JN101 Introduction to Journalism’ twice. The first unit he said I’ve failed in 2011, I was NOT EVEN in Fiji to sit for it. And the reason I didn’t showed up for the last two months of the semester was because of the scholarship department in New-Cal which didn’t paid for my fees on time. Then, I got deresgistred. There is a huge difference between being deregistred and failed a unit. So please dear students, check your facts before spreading his rumors about me here.
I just got tired of listening in class about ‘raising the Fiji Media to International standards’ that always be my concerns in this program cause I AM NOT GOING TO WORK IN FIJI and this is the Univsersity of the SOUTH PACIFIC as far as I know.
Nobody is using me, I am a big girl, I can think by myself and make my own opinion.
I’m glad to know throught this piece that USP is concerned, cause I already told them what’s going on around here but it seems like USP don’t care about the ‘equal opportunity’ for each students to succeed.
Yes my only one error here it’s only that I’m not in his good books. I admit I am lazy but not that stupid.

Magalie, thank you for writing and I’m sorry for getting the FLNKs connection wrong. I was led to believe you were part of that initiative, Radio Djido being the Kanak station in Noumea.

I’m also sorry for your experiences at the hands of Dr Edge. I have received other information in the past 24 hours which indicates that his problems with his students are far more serious than hitherto thought.

Graham,
yes Radio Djiido is the FLNKS radio station, but USP accepted me not because I am involved within the FLNKS. USP enrolled me regarding my capacity to study in this university.
As you know the FLNKS is trying to get more connections with Regional Universities as the tertiary education is going to be transfered to the Government of New Caledonia before 2014.
You are not wrong when you write ” to improve ties between Francophone journalists in New Caledonia and their Anglophone counterparts in Fiji.” and it is why we are the only one NC media organization which is a member of a regional media organization, PINA.
But because some people ‘well advised’ think that I am going for a special treatment is not true. I’m studying and working like any other student.
And yes it is even worse from what you’ve heard ! I know you’ll manage to investigate and get your facts rights not as some ‘anonymous’ who are posting here without any sense of verification, oh my bad, it must be the ‘international standards’ !

Dear Graham,
Someone in the blog did correctly mention that you allow Anonymous writers in Grubsheet. This gives a free run to a lot of people for obvious reasons including cowards. But nowhere did you mention that you would be replying to, especially the Anonymous ones. You don’t have to….and please don’t give it to them because I believe the focus should remain with Mark Edge.

Any way we don’t read those and frankly we don’t care….. the sideshows re: Peter Lomas/Pina/Robie on who said and wrote what and that historical nonsence…I believe all the mentioned peoples have moved on….grubs have remained grubs and they will continue with their whinging, no matter what. Let us handle them.

What you ‘re doing for our Fiji, including for the first time in media history, giving us ordinary day to day folks, people who will eventually count, the opportunity to participate in discussions that will move our beloved country forward. So thank you for that….and yes on two occations we did collide….but that is what positive discussion all about.

To all those Watchers/Uncles/Arbitrators and what not….Go read Fiji Sun and …..sorry it is our time you stupid.

Chand,
You scum of the earth – it is Indo-Fijians like you who should be lined up and shot behind the mango trees – you and your hatred and poisonous mind and pen makes me puke – no better that those i-taukei racists who held similar views – I wonder what you are capable of doing if and when you get what you claim will be your day in Fiji – that Fiji Sun paper wont last and so will Graham Davis – any new government could takeover those Fijian passports from you chaps – go rot in hell, you Indian pig – shame on our community

@ Indo-Fijian Dissenter ,
Either you are a coward or a scum…or maybe both ( it a complimentry 2 for one for you).
“Our time” means time for us ordinary folks…for ordinary i-taukeis and indo fijians and others who make up the majority of the mix….if you and the rest like you have been poisoned by us ordinary folks, so be it. I know irritant scums like you and your likes, but hey this is our time….you are irrelevent and so are the likes of you….you can go and stand behind the mango tree and wait all your life…take Julum and Bahadur with you and while you wait, we will send copies of Fiji Sun to you all. And for your prayers to come true, you can utilise Daya Nand (aka David Nancy) as your pastor for services.

Well said – that is why I have been very reluctant to post comments on this site and have increasingly begun to doubt what I read from Graham saheb in the Fiji Sun, and so do many of my Indo-Fijian friends – except why insult a pig – this chap Chand is not worth replying to – a thoroughly sick idiot who is saying what Graham likes to hear

These chaps Chand, Ram and others are sick lot – forgiveness is not in their veins – thoroughly bitter and twisted souls – Fiji Sun is not worth even wiping bottoms with – thoroughly compromised rag shit of a paper

@ Bahadur,
Shouldn’t you be standing with a spade near the pothole filled with water in Flagstaff trying to dig the moon out..?

You just don’t get, do you? AAre bahut Julum kar diya Bahadur ( you have done wonderful Bahadur)…with your spade.
This is why reading Fiji Sun is important for you guys…..knowledge based paper that will at least improve your basic comprehension.

I think you don’t even understand what I have written in the above post…and the same with your other colleagues…..oh boy…..Bahadur???? really…what’s in a name when the deed is otherwise.

Who am I to forgive?????when no one has wronged me…..oh boy…start your education with Fiji Sun…some bahadur……oh and did you know NFP is a nah nah???

Thank you Magalie Tingal for clarifying those points – and Graham for being gallant enough to apologise. Graham – like Chand, I believe you don’t need to respond to folks who lose the plot of the articles and get personal with you. Let them whine and swine away. Your articles in the Sun ensures that the ordinary folks who are not privileged to Internet get some read on stuff they would otherwise not be accessible to. If folks don’t like the articles they don’t have to read it – the fact that they continue to buy and read is testament to their enjoyment. So chill!

Actually I just wish to register my appreciation to you all for all your contributions and the analysis of the various views and contributions. It has help me – a nobody but just a little citizen of Fiji – think of issues very seriously. So thank you guys and also Grubsheet for making it possible to see things from a wider perspective.

I’ll prefer to have my own views private. Hope you’ll understand as I do not wish to get entangled as I’m not a good debater but just a little citizen of Fiji.

There is little point in my persuading you otherwise, “G is a sell-out”, but the facts are these:

My professional relationship with Qorvis is new and completely transparent. I had a friendly relationship with one of its executives who visited me at my home in Sydney last March but that visit was strictly social.

I repeat: I have never discussed with Qorvis or the Fiji Government what I should write. I write what I do because they are my views and have been since before the 2006 coup.

I decided with Grubsheet to specialise in Fiji because that’s where my interests lie and I get dozens of comments from readers as opposed to the handful I got by being “all things to all people”.

I AM independent in that I don’t have a full-time job. I work for Southern Cross Austereo in Australia and I work for Qorvis in Fiji, commuting back and forth between the two countries.

Were I to have embraced my opinions as a direct result of my relationship with Qorvis, you would have a point. But my support for the multiracial agenda of the Bainimarama government is long-standing and pre-dates the relationship by many years. Nice try, though.

On my last post I asked a question which you conveniently ignored. Can you give me another example of an award winning journalist being paid by a dictator’s PR firm who writes independently and objectively on the dictatorship?

You claim your views have not been changed by payment so let me re-word my question.

Can you think of any other award winning journalist who shared exactly the same views and opinions as human rights abusing dictator?

Mr Davis and Mr Chand, please do not waste your time replying to this ugly and racist stuff from the Fiji Times/Coup 4.5 people who want to take over here.
The real issue is what is happening in the USP Journalism programme. Mr Davis outlined this in his column.
Ms Tingal has now given a sad insight into her treatment.
We also know there are other serious problems.
People, can we get back to the real discussion here?

The intensity with which they came on this topic with archived nonsence explains a lot about them…frankly I didn’t bother to read and so did a lot of other positive contributers on this site.

This reminded me of the Congress Party of India who has a call centre team set up to barrage news blogs if events don’t suit them. But alas, those idiots in the call center also run out of ideas,….. the idea is to fill the site with the opposing views, never mind how silly it may seem. And finally the Congress Party looks silly….the same applies to the buggers from FT /c.45.

And to these blokes, silliness seem to have no bounds.

It goes by the saying: “They will come with intensity to argue and threaten and fight. You ignore them. And then you win”

“Old News”. Only to a regime insider who knows all about the evidence of judicial interference. To the rest of us it is evidence of something that we have known about for a long time. To most of us this is breaking news.

I thank you for making my point for me that you are a PR hack and no longer an objective independent journalist.

On Grubsheet you have written about the independence of the judiciary in Fiji. You came down on the side of your paymaster Khaiyum as expected saying there was no evidence of interference by the Attorney General and his lackeys.

Now Justice Marshall has posted a lot of evidence of judicial interference.

The old award winning journalist Graham Davis would have researched the information confirmed the allegations with other sources and written an award winning article about how the Attorney General in Fiji was interfering with the independence of the judiciary and that the rule of law in Fiji was dead.

Instead we have Graham Davis 2.0 the highly paid PR Hack who responds as ordered by Qorvis. “They guy’s contract wasn’t renewed. He’s now unloading. It happens. Old news.”

Why a website? I have no choice. The Attorney General runs censorship and untrue propaganda. At the end of my contract I wrote an uncontroversial letter to the Fiji Times on 15th July 2012. I said on behalf of myself and my wife, that we wished to thank the people of Fiji for their welcome and their support to us. It did not appear in the Fiji Times.

Judge Marshall, I am not the Fiji Times, nor did I have a hand in your removal. You have clearly had differences with the AG. I have allowed a link to your version of events to be published on my website. I regard that as more than fair under the circumstances, especially as the issue has no bearing whatsoever on the subject at hand – the alleged behaviour of Dr Edge. I’d venture that any truly judicious examination of these facts would produce the same conclusion. I extend to you and your wife every good wish for the future.

Did you write the uncontroversial letter to the Fiji Sun, the widely read and most popular newspaper in Fiji? If not, why not.
And why do you think the other newspaper should publish your letter?

Judge Marshall, do you think the Letters column of any news paper as your personal space??

Hundreds of people including myself, write to every other newspapers everyday, why do you think your letter should take presedence over others whose opinions maybe of National importance than yours?

Did you consider a paid ad.?

A similar crime committed in the US, Australia and Fiji would encounter different punishments in these countries. In Fiji, the Attorney General being the custodian, defines the perimeter within which the judicial machinery functions. A majority of the Judges have decided to respect that view besides you.

Oh please Justice. If you thought the judiciary was so bent why were you so desperate to stay for another term? Your piece is full of speculation, not evidence. No wonder you were not renewed. Are justices allowed to kiss and tell? I thought they take their secrets to the grave! Just a bitter man who couldn’t face rejection. Grow up.

It seems this is the only site where you feel and are made to feel important – come and join us, Fiji Gandhu Association, and than only you will see what sort of Fiji we live in – no banana but naked pyjama boy!

My name is Chand and I am a Fijian,whether you like it or not. I have an opinion on matters and intellect greater than yours and have guts to put them across, whether you like it or not.
I will not be cowered by annonymous cowards like you and will continue to express my opinion and views, whether you like it or not.

It is my job to fight cowards like you and yes my opinion matters and is important whether you like it or not.
Your mouth smells of cum so go and buy some janola…looks like they pissed on your brain as well.

@Judge Marshall and Graham
It is also contempt of court and defamation of character old darling. I suggest you get some legal advice before you decide to publish a link Graham. Judge M is safely put of the country but you go to Fiji frequently.

Justice Marshall claims that the Qarase Bainimarama decision was pre written by the Australian Government and was not written by the judges on the Court. I do hope he can prove this because otherwise the Australians can sue him for making such an allegation?

Mr Davis, you wrote a column telling of the problems at the USP journalism school since Mr Edge arrived there.
People such as the Fiji Times/Coup 4.5 group and racists who have found their way to this site have tried to turn this into a discussion about something else.
Can I suggest that it would be an opportune moment for Mr Edge to respond to Mr Davis and Ms Tingal and let us all get back to the real issue.
Mr Edge has intervened several times in the discussion so he must be reading this. However, he has not yet responded to the serious allegations made by Mr Davis and Ms Tingal..
Let us now hear Mr Edge’s side of this story. The comments by Mr Davis and Ms Tingal need a reply.

I would love nothing more than to respond in detail by chronicling the reasons for Ms Tingal failing not one but now three of my courses. Believe me, they have nothing to do with her questioning the basis of any of my lectures. However, I believe it would be unethical for me to do so, as it would likely violate her privacy rights. If she would be prepared to consent to such a disclosure, however, I would be happy to give you all the details.

@ Mark Edge,
Ok not one but three, you want to tell us that she failed 3 of your subjects..yet you want to talk about ethics……..it seems there is no limit to the arrogance you display and the contempt with which you treat the rest of us.

How about telling us the benefit you derived (or not) in promoting the block of flats in the Fiji times……..talking of ethics.

Ok fellas. Just getting cosy settling in this magnificiently laid back hotel in Toowoomba, Qld. Its called Royal Hotel. It’s a great watering hole. Had a few pots of XXXX. Great beer, great taste.

Now getting back at the important issue here. This guy, Edge. I had a word with him on Saturday from Nadi airport. After conversing with this piglet for about three minutes or so, I realized what a dumb numbskull he really is.

He should be deported to Canada so that he can be given a role to play in “the X-Files.

The first comment against Mark Edge came from Thakur Ranjit Singh – and folks, we missed the biggest foul-mouth spurted against Mother India – of course he was forced to apologise – but it just showed this man’s true colour, and how he had made up his family history – Robie should dsbar him from the journalism school’s hall of fame and create his name – first one – on hall of shame:

What Thakur Ranjit Singh wrote on Facebook
By Indian Newslink 29/08/2012 16:16:00
Font size: Decrease font Enlarge font
What Thakur Ranjit Singh wrote on Facebook

First Comments on August 11, 2012

As every Indian man and his dog talk about India’s Independence celebration on 15 August, we need to stand back, away from misnomer and misplaced tagging of “Mera Bharat Mahaan” and reflect on our achievement as the largest democracy on earth.

Tagged as the worst country in the world for a woman to live, with largest amount of black money hoarded in Swiss Banks, with most corrupt politicians and officials, with very lucrative businesses and businessmen worldwide, but bereft of human kindness that goes with it.

As a business community, we have done well, how about as human beings? Look at the Olympic medal tally. China with the same population is in top three, while India with a billion people has become a laughing stock.

Do we still have corrupt officials like Kalamadi leading our sporting team? How Is Our Bharat Mahaan? So this Independence Day, bow your head and pray for a miracle to salvage the name of a once proud country, so once again we can say, we are proud to be an Indian. Food for thought for all those suffering from ostrich syndrome. I am proud to be Fijian, and thank my grandfather for running away from India in 1915 for a new home in Fiji.

On this Independence Day, we could not pray for anything more for a prosperous, honest, conscientious and caring nation where all have equality and share in the economic cake.

Jay Hind, Bharat Mata Ki Jay, Mera Bharat Mahaan.

The “Apology”

On August 15, 2012

(Edited Version)

On this India’s 66th Independence Day, I very humbly request to all my offended Face book friends, and all offended Indians, to forgive me, because I am sorry to have spoken lies about India, and retract everything I said in my posting.

I apologise for bringing any disrepute to the country of Gandhi, Subahash, Tagore, Tilak, Hari Singh Nalwa, Bhagat Singh, Sivaji, Jhashi ki Rani and my ancestor Prithvi Raj Chauhaan. I also regret bringing any tension between good friendship of Fiji and India by talking untruths about India.

In retracting and apologising point by point, I now proudly say as an Indian that

Women have full rights, equality and respect as men in India, which is the best country in the world for women to be born in.

Indian politicians and businessmen do not have any black money in Swiss Banks.

India has very honest, non-corrupt and conscientious politicians.

India is a very compassionate nation where the economic growth and growth in wealth has filtered down to common people in ghettoes.

As a populous nation, we are proud to have achieved the equivalent fame in Olympics.

My grandfather Bansi did not run away from India in 1915 because of poverty in Rajasthan, but wanted a free ride to Fiji on HMS Ganges ship, and hence I ended up in Fiji as an Indentured offspring.

Journo’s comments rile Indian community

By Venkat Raman 29/08/2012 16:27:00
The comments made by popular journalist and media specialist Thakur Ranjit Singh have attracted widespread criticism from a large number of people from the extended Indian community in New Zealand and abroad.

His original comments on Facebook were condemned as ‘outrageous, unwarranted and vicious’ by Members of Parliament and others (three of which appear separately in this section), while many community leaders and readers have said that Mr Singh had ‘condemned a Nation and its people.’

Our editorial appearing under Viewlink reflects the opinions of a majority of our readers. The following contains the views from the community.

The Waitakere Indian Association, of which Mr Singh is the Vice-President, distanced itself from his comments, saying that they did not represent either the views of the organisation or those of any of its executive committee members.

Credibility questioned
President Sunil Chandra told this newspaper that the Executive Committee at its emergency meeting held on August 13 decided to suspend him from the post of Vice-President, since “there are questions about his personal credibility and commitment to the advancement of the Indian community in New Zealand.”

“All of us are proud of our Indian ancestry and the progress made by India since its independence on August 15, 1947. Our Committee was shocked by the comments made by Mr Singh. They are clearly unacceptable,” Mr Chandra said.

Magsons Hardware Mitre 10 Mega Chairman & Managing Director and the Hindu Council of New Zealand President Vinod Kumar described Mr Singh as a ‘failed journalist.’

“His remarks and comments are always without any base and research. Let alone that, his thoughts are of hatred. We as Hindu Council of New Zealand totally condemn his remarks on the Facebook,” he said.

Muslim community leader Ahemad Bhamji said he wished to disassociate himself completely from the comments of Mr Singh.

“I am disappointed that Thakur Ranjit Singh had chosen to write derogatory remarks about India and Indians. I am proud that my ancestors were from India and I want the future generations to have the same sentiments. I am sure that my disappointment with Mr Singh is shared by a majority of Indo-Fijians,” he said.

Bhartiya Samaj Charitable Trust Chairman Jeet Suchdev said that he was “utterly disappointed” with such remarks.

“I agree with all the respondents who condemned the senseless remarks about our Mother India. His knowledge of a great country is poor and his bad attitude towards the people of India is deplorable,” he said.

Manukau Indian Association President Balu Mistry said that Mr Singh’s comments amounted to treachery.

“I have known Thakur Ranjit Singh and I am surprised by his ‘rejection of being Indian’ and running away from India. Many people did not run away from India to Fiji, but were forced to being indentured labourers,” he said.

“Every country has its positive and negative factors and nobody has the right to highlight the negatives of any country or its people the way Mr Singh did, that too taking Independence Day as a subject. What kind of a person does that? It was also disturbing that he had a few like-minded people liking and praising his comments,” he said.

Apurv Shukla, who is in the media, said that Mr Singh had expressed his own views and that no self-respecting person would agree with them.

“But in a country where Freedom of Speech is a fundamental right and the press is considered the fourth pillar of democracy, there is room for everyone’s views. India has shown to the world that it is a truly secular country, where religion never came in the way of merit. Anna Hazare’s movement against corruption has brought that scourge to the forefront of public discourse,” he said.

I always knew this Ranjit Singh to be a chutia idiot – just look at his new appearance – Fiji’s “Amitabh Bachan” – be proud of your ancestor’s motherland, bhaiji. Fiji Sun should banish him from its pages as columnist – some Sun journalists are, in fact, studying in India on Indian government scholarships in journalism. How can this chutia accuse native Fijians of racism when he holds such views – not lately he was exposed in some blog as berating Gujeratis in Fiji.

Couple of weeks ago after Rajesh Khanna died, this dude Ranjit had a feature article on something…(oh about Anirudh Diwakar)…..and he was the MC…and this and that…(did Fiji Sun really had to print that???), his foto caught me off guard….frankly I thought …well well….. who wants to look like Rajesh Khanna…
Anyways, this Thakur thingi in front of his name has always been a bit of a bother to me….and now his lineage to Prithvi Raj…….!!!
My request to Fiji Sun is to keep him off the pages…..I mean read the article below by moto…..these are important articles to be printed…..Ranjit…nah…

India, like China, US, Russia and all other nations have their own issues and it is their people and respective governments who have to solve….

We are reaching out and making friends all around untill this fella decides to poke his nose…..

Its funny how people here are pointing fingers to Graham for his consultancy post with Qorvis, those who are accusing the current government of well the same shit different day gabberish. In all of the post it clearly looks like Fiji’s government, USP and citizens have been judge according to the ways of the west, all this international standards bullshit is just a cloak for western standards. Firstly let me touch on the media, the question I wanna ask is why should Fiji journalists/media adhere to the western formular??? The british media hit the headline recently for all the wrong reason, journalist/editors were guilty of intercepting phone calls, bribing scotland yard officers/police officers/detectives, illegally tapping into phone voicemails even of the death just so they could get information which they claim is in the public interest and also claimed their story were based on facts because they have sources and when questioned back than they claimed their source was annonymous due to safety. Well we found out later that actually the source quite frankly something else.
In the US you just have to look at the Iraq war to see the role of the media. I wonder if any of you have heard of a clause in US millitary personnel job contracts called “stop loss” which basically means under the order of the government any soldier can be ordered to go back to Iraq/Afghan or any war theater even if they are due to leave the millitary on the day. And that clause applies not only during war but anytime. And if any soldier takes it up to court they will loose because no judge will dare stand up to the millitary/government.
You see the government of the day regardless if its democratic or not still have the power either directly or indirectly to influence the media, court and citizens. Anyone who thinks otherwise clearly dont know the ways of the world. The reallity is that power works better to have influence, the only reason the US, China, Russia, UK etc have respect is because they have mighty millitaries whom the politicians and mliitary superiors arent afraid to use to get what they want.
Money in forms of aids can only get you as far but fear takes you all the way. Why do you think western countries like UK are always careful not to piss off muslims its because they know that it most probably could have a deadly effects, thats fear. And also why most arab nation dont fuck with Israel because of their eye for an eye policy, you bomb us we’ll return the favaour with a bigger bomb, hence no one really dares Israel unless they’re prepared for the consequences.
All of the previous government have done little improvement to Fiji and its people except fill their pockets. Maskerading in the cloak of democracy with a unfair constitution is nothing short of being so unfair, I only feel for the common family and villages who were treated with disrespect by the very people they voted for and their corrupt chiefs. This current government is doing far more then the previous so called democratic leaders, yes it came to power through a coup but if it didnt Fiji at the hands of dickheads like Qarase was doomed, the Qarase government manipulated the economy reports to suit their agenda.
After the 2008 economic crises that the western world was responsible for plus how their governments secretly does what it wants using the media to manipulate the people eg Iraq then I am happy to see that our government has said to Australia andNZ government, right enough is enough we’re gonna build our country and economy our way, yes we may have faults but tell me which government doesnt. In all honesty I’ld rather have a government who came to power by gun then one by rigging election, at least the gun government tells us like it is and when they say something is gonna happen we know it will unlike previous politician leaders who change their word more often then rainfalls in Fiji.
Fiji government is just like other western governments they use power to get the job done, the only difference is the western ones have had years of experience of hiding and spinning their work in a positive light to the media. As the saying goes now we wanna play with the big boys we will have to learn the tricks of the trade quick, atleasts we have the foundation right which is power, enough of this bullshit spin, countries and economies are not build on good deed but power and brains, the key is educating our future leaders on how the world really works.

Can I recommend this be the feature article in the weekend Fiji Sun, minus some fuck thingis….Peter Lomas, you reading this..???..get in touch with Moto….Folks who don’t have internet or the time to go on one need to read this…..this is what the edges of the journalistic world do not want us to know……wonder how many of the students of journalism know about the phone hacking scandal of the News of The World….UK.

“I will not be interrogated by an anonymous, faceless nobody. I have given you an answer. This is merely rude and gratuitous. Bugger off.”

It is not an interrogation and neither is it rude. I cannot think of any other award winning journalist becoming the spin doctor for a dictator. You have far more knowledge of all things media you may be able to give another example.

I have already told you I have been taken to the camp for expressing my views and so I wish to remain anonymous.. Though I am a bit of a showoff and I would love to speak openly so I will tell you what. You start exposing the Human Rights abuses of this regime and do some investigative journalism on Fiji, instead of your regime puff pieces, and I will post on grubsheet under my real name.

Honestly, aren’t we Mr Goody Two Shoes personified. Human rights abuses? What about the abuse of the human rights of 40 per cent of the population by the Qarase Government? You choose to cast me as a spin doctor for the dictator. Fine. But what are you doing to assist Fiji back to democratic rule? Hide behind a mask and spruik self-indulgent, self-righteous cant. Again. Bugger off.

Honestly, aren’t you a child using someone elses bad behavour to justify worse behavior by your beloved dictator. That is an argument that had no effect on your teachers in kindergarden and for an award winning journalist to use it is downright pathetic.

I am doing what every person who believes in democracy should be doing. Namely, I am working to bring down the dictator. What are you doing you are doing to bring back democracy. Oh that’s right you are being paid to help keep him in power.

I will continue to hide behind a mask. Maybe the next time I meet you at Dilip’s, I will let slip my true feelings and we can have a debate. Sorry not going to happen because now you are a fully paid up informer of the regime.

So you are in my social circle but you still haven’t got the guts to reveal yourself. How pathetic is that? You’ll get your chance to voice your opinion at the ballot box soon enough and so will everyone else. That’s what we’re working towards – a purer democracy of one person, one vote one value. Not the sham that you wanted perpetuated. I show my face, you don’t. I box with a shadow, you target a real person. Think about it. And spare me the cheap shot of pretending to be “up close”. Citing a friend of mine like you have is a complete disgrace. My opinions are mine, not his. And to drag him into this shows what a low-life you are.

Graham is a sell out

Posted September 21, 2012 at 12:25 PM

You say you are working to a purer democracy but in reality you are working to keep Bainimarama and Khaiyum in power.

We have had some prime examples of the future this week.

Justice Marshall has provided us with the reality of the Fiji judiciary and how it is controlled. We have also seen the ILO removed from Fiji after being invited here by the regime. Both episodes point to a distinct lack of democracy, transparency and governance. That is the future under Bainimarama not this pure democracy you talk about.

Khaiyum and Bainimarama are very good with their words. Not surprisingly as they have Graham Davis on hand to advise them and to write their press releases. However, their actions never live up to their words.

It is actions that will give us democracy and not Bainimarama’s hollow assurances that are not matched by his actions.

As for your friend I know his opinions are not yours.

As for me being a low life. That may be true. But I have not sold my principles and my credibility for a few lousy bucks.

@ Graham is a sell out, you keep harping on about being taken to camp for expressing your view as a justification of your anonymous name and demanding to Graham to provide factual evidence of human right abuse and wanting him to do an investigative piece on human rights. Fella do you even realise how you sound and come across??? Firstly prove by providing something solid that you were infact taken up to camp??? Dont spin the bullshit around and expect us to take you for your word. You’re demanding quite alot yet giving absolutely nothing, you know ive heard that before from sdl ministers, I want I want I want.
You’re on a blog that supports the current government, are you that dump to not realise that we have different opinions, do you even know that human rights violation comes in different levels namely physical and emotional, now one thing that over rules it is national security/safety in both the physical and economic sense. Sometimes certain action are taken for the overall betterment, its called strategies. If you cant figure out the point Im making then Im afraid you dont have the interllect to converse diplomatically and all you’re doing is waisting our and your time, pissing us off and making a douche out of yourself
When the past government use racial instability and lies to be voted into power, they’re committing both physical and emotional human rights abuse. Remember fella broken promises sometimes hurts more then a left hook and black eye. No institution either government or private is perfect, as individuals we weigh up the positives and negatives and judge in our opinion whom we prefer and fella majority of us have made the choice and its clear our presence here reflects our individual choices.
When you charge in here with your demands and claims its almost as if you’re demeaning us and insulting our intelligence. We know the song fella and we’ve made our choice, we’re big boys/girls and we’ll face the consequences of our choice, its high time you respect that and stop harping on about coconut wireless news. In the words of ths yanks, either you’re with us or against us.
Sa dri yani.

Moto Bitu,
That was most certainly not a personal attack and is certainly more measured than your comments to me..

“You’re demanding quite alot yet giving absolutely nothing, you know ive heard that before from sdl ministers, I want I want I want.”

“, are you that dump” I think you meant DUMB

“. If you cant figure out the point Im making then Im afraid you dont have the interllect to converse diplomatically and all you’re doing is waisting our and your time, pissing us off and making a douche out of yourself” I don’t think you are conversing diplomatically.

In effect you said this blog site is pro Bainimarama and no other views are welcome here. However, the owner of this blogsite Graham welcomes me here “but invites comments from people of all political persuasions.”

Clearly I am against you.

Clearly I have different opinions to Graham. But in all honesty I can say I arrived at my opinions myself. Graham can no longer say that and have credibility as he is now being paid indirectly by the dictator himself.

Hey piggy,,,,, you accuse Moto of no diplomacy in his conversation. What about you, you rat bag? What sort of diplomacy do you demonstrate here?
You call someone a “dictator” and go on to accuse Graham of being paid by that dictator.

Oh yes….. that’s your opinion, eh piggy???
Get out of this forum and take your methane gas back to your sty where you belong.

“You call someone a “dictator” and go on to accuse Graham of being paid by that dictator.

Oh yes….. that’s your opinion, eh piggy???”

Jukebox that is not opinion that is fact.

By the dictionary definition Bainimarama is a dictator. Even Graham in earlier comments and postings has referred to Bainimarama’s regime as a dictorship.

Even Graham Davis calls Fiji a dictatorship I quote from Grubsheet

“Graham Davis
Posted July 1, 2011 at 6:05 AM

So what’s your point? Australia is a democracy, Fiji is a dictatorship. No-one is arguing this self evident truth.”

So we are all agreed that Bainimarama is a dictator running a dictatorship.

Now it is also fact Graham is paid by Qorvis. It is also on the public record Qorvis are paid more than $40,000 US per month by the dictatorship in Fiji. Qorvis are not after Graham’s expertise in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain or Yemen some of their other authoritatrian clients but obviously they want his expertise on Fiji because he has spent so much time here over the past 40 years.

Hey piggy….can’t you hide behind a thicker mask where no one can tell who you really are. I do not wish to reveal your true identity here, Mr. methane gas. If Graham doesn’t know, I will tell him who the punk you are.

But then again…….. I din’t think Graham wouldn’d two hoots about who you are.

You say you arrived at you opinion yourself, how? did you just magically think of it? Come on fella we’re all influenced by our family, profession and friends. Again your claims can’t be verified. Graham has had the same view since before the coup and he provided a link earlier on to verify it, a point you clearly ignored because it doesn’t suite your agenda. So whose credibility is in question??? Clearly it’s you fella. You claim he has been indirectly paid by Frank whose to say you’ve been indirectly paid by the SDL to be their spin doctor…
It’s not a claim to say this blog is pro Frank, it’s a fact. Stop twisting words fella. Just read the comments and articles to realise whose side majority are in. And yes you’re quite right that Graham invites comments from all political angles which I totally agree on because it’s healthy. What i’ve seen is that you have consistantly demand and to Grahams credit he has been forthcoming with links to verify his words and brief explanations on things. Yet you havent provided a thing, absolutely nothing since. And that to me is unfair, you keep manouvering your arguments around, picking up unverified claims yet not acknowledging Grahams links and reasonings
For the sake of verifications, tell him your name, profession and most importantly who would you like to be the prime minister??? Lets see if you can atleast provide some, no bullshit excuse fella.
I apologise for using inane words to you at my previous posts, it was uncalled for and I can only hope you forgive my short comings. The point of my argument still stands though i.e you seems to demand a lot from Graham but fail to give your fair share.
Sa dri yani…

I also understand and respect Graham’s views on a multiracial Fiji. As someone who is mixed race it is important to me. However, Graham opines on many other aspects of life under the dictator. He has written of our judiciary, USP, Air Pacific to mention just a few areas where he had not expressed his views in 2006.

Oddly enough all his opinions are exactly the same as Bainimarama’s. Now it could be a coincidence but the fact he is being paid by Qorvis makes this questionable to say the least.

I am not going to tell you, Graham or Jukebox my name. You may not believe I have been to the camp. But I would prefer to live with your doubt than the repercussions of giving away my identity.

Who would I like to PM? I don’t know but not Qarase, Chaudhry, Bainiamaram or Khaiyum. Maybe Shamima Ali, Parmesh Chand, Richard Naidu, Joe Tuamoto. Whoever it is, should not be from the either the old traditional parties or part of the current regime.

I think enough time and space has been give to this….well whoever this bloke is. One thing is certain, he is not going to reveal so we can have a real and genuine debate….he seems to thrive on annonymity and have a shot at everyone…this guy is not worth it…
Times up mate…get out…go and play your shadow “game’ elswhere…maybe c4.5…..

You just remind me of those cowards who would shadow people from the sidelines, hide in the allyways, take a potshot and run away in the dark corner….then go home, switch off the lights, go to mama and have a glass of milk and biscut.

I don’t debate with “opinioniated” dudes with no name………dudes with “By the dictionary definition Bainimarama is a dictator”….dudes with “.. you are working to keep Bainimarama and Khaiyum in power……Justice Marshall has provided us with the reality of the Fiji judiciary “…..really.
I don’t seek to attack individuals, they just present themselves like yourself and quite frankly, the same old tired arguements………oh no.

Gotta get out and have a round of golf. Away from all this crap coming out of C4/5 financier, He has just revealed himself to all of us. I had always known he was Mickky the mouse. Will give you a call sometime mate. Maybe we can have a beer or two together. Gotta go fellas.

I am appalled that you would let such comments continue on this space. I am a third year Journalism Student and I would like to request that you quit posting on things with relevance to Marc Edge and that of the Programme.

Your blog has gone to the extent of fueling people to post racist comments and make personal attacks on others and worse you do not realise the effect this is having on us as students.

We would like to be able to continue with our education and not have the rest of the media or old students for that matter be against us.

This is a sincere request..Leave us alone!!!….because really, in your attempt to help, you’re not helping at all.

We can solve our own problems and not have it sensationalised.

Magalie – can you please come talk to us and not have your problems posted into cyber space. I’m sure we can all meet when you can come bk!!….Facebook me 😉

Graham if you really care then you will stop this…it has gone to far..and I tell you these are problems that have already been looked at and have been met.

For Journalism students who have problems…Please lets all use our Student Body JSA (u know who to contact) to voice our queries!!!…

For all those students who have been using pseudonym..I suggest you use your real names so we can know who you are…have the guts to

Kalesi Mele you speak for yourself. I am a third year student, You don’t preach to us and tell us what to do. you sound like marc edge now. I support Graham Davis. USP has not been able to solve this problems for months that’s why students using grubsheet. Head of school is taking side with marc edge. JSA did nothing so don’t talk about JSA. if not for grubsheet, students would suffer. After grubsheet highlighted our problems , USP took some action, but not enough. kalesi, go talk to USP and head of school and JSA, not grubsheet. do not shoot the messenger kalesi. We do not use out name because marc is never stop victimising students. It is stil going on. where is JSA, no clue? just too much talk JSA and sweep under the carpet but never solve problem. Thank you Graham Davis and Grubsheet.

Kalesi Mele are you saying Grahams article is rubbish? Surely if there is a problem at the USP and someone acts on it the problem will be resolved! If a person who comes along to this site and starts writing about it they are either lying that the problem isn’t getting resolved or they telling their side of the story which is most likely true. Solution is simple solve the problem quickly so that they don’t a chance to write about it in Grubsheet! Not asking for to much are we?

Is she against Graham? Is she for Marc? Is she trying to protect the program’s credibility?

Or is she worried students are airing out their various remarks – perhaps some are racist?

Or she just wants them left alone?

I’m really sorry Ms Mele ……. I’m not very smart …………. but your posting was just not clear to me. You seem to be condemning Graham and want to fight him.

Perhaps you meant something else and perhaps it didn’t come out clearly.

Maybe you just want to be left alone and want to nicely ask Graham to please stop all the talk on this topic.

Well its seems you did more than that. But that is your right and I respect that.

It’s just that I believe you were sincere that you want to be left alone and you really meant it from deep inside that you want to be left alone and students can solve their own problems and perhaps there’s a channel for students to follow if there are grievances.

But Ms Mele I think you did more than that and I think more ‘missile’ will fly at you. Maybe good idea to ask for forgiveness and ask politely …… I think Graham will listen.

Graham is intelligent and a good person too like Marc – its just that they have differing views of things.

I really feel for you so……. please forgive me for saying/asking you this ………. maybe you may need to ask for forgiveness as you may have gone over the line – before its too late. But that’s just me ………….. I’m a nobody………… trying to give my 1 cent advice.

Anyway; aaaaa Graham – When is your new article coming.

I’ve checked Grubsheet so many times for a new article and hear what everybody has to say. I find your articles very interesting and love to always read and follow it.

As for ‘Graham is a sellout’, Jukebox, Chand, Moto bitu, and all those for and against Graham – thanks for your views man – you really make me think.

Good thing we have leaders like all of you who are debating things for us small people to really think about before we finish this Constitution and start the election.

Fella thanks for your feedback, some valid points and thank you for countering the topic of our debate rather then personal. Firstly to touch on Grahams view, you pointed out how he wrote several articles where he didn’t have the view of in 2006, perhaps the reason being those particular topics didn’t exist until after 2006 when the coup had taken effect.
As for him having the same view as Frank, I think by now you should realise majority of us here have the same view as Frank too so to single out Graham is abit unfair don’t you think…
I see you mentioned that you’re a mixed race so I believe that you’re more at home with us here than those at coup 4.5. Our government is trying its best, as a developing nation we’re not yet ready for most things like argumentative journalism, total media freedom, and countless other things. What we need is journalists and people who can help build up our nation.
One thing that separates us from western countries like Australia is that our multi cultures, we have traditions and customs and we have to try to combine it with democracy, lots of things will clash, one main thing is women’s right, traditionally they’re rarely heard especially in villages, in democracy they are, so we have to find a balance. Some traditions have to go, like women now have to have their say it’s only fair, on the flip side some democracy values don’t have to be taken on board because it doesn’t suite us.
You see right now, us, our generation we have the chance to build a Fiji style democracy, not American, Australian, British or New Zealand style but our style. What works for them don’t always necessarily work for us.
You said you don’t want any old politician and current regime guys to be PM, and I disagree, I feel Frank should be, and aiyaz his adviser. Granted they’re not a perfect team but what they have done for Fiji is monumental. We cannot continuously judge our government and people through western values and ways, we have to build our own style and we need Frank and co to lead us because they started it, let them finish it.
Lastly fella maybe it’s time you realise you’re in a position to help build our nation through positive feedbacks, quit trying to be a black sheep, and don’t go back to coup 4.5, stay here and help us help Fiji. You already have the foundation i.e you want multicultural, now help us achieve it. After assessing your posts it’s clear that you’re well educated, im not saying I condone it but perhaps if it did really happen your camp visit was just the wake up call you needed to realise your potential is more useful here than at 4.5.
You know your stuff now help graham, I bet you have a talent for research, now use it fella, don’t be shy.
Sa dri yani.

Yes River side….that is all we want…to be left alone to deal with our problems.

We have had meetings and the same things that have been raised here have already been solved.

From one comment to another people have been lashing out at each other, trying to assert that their view is more correct than the other and some have even gone to the extent to use the race card.

We spent a semester without an academic and we had to work extra hard to put our newspaper out because the school could only offer one unit as there was no one to teach the other units. ( this was prior to Marc’s arrival)

My concern is with the program. If Marc leaves I wont be affected, but the 1st and the 2nd years will and I don’t want them to have to wait for another academic like we did.

Mr Graham I apologise that I may have seemed too confrontational in my earlier comment, but really, we have solved this – and we do have an avenue to raise our concerns and that is with JSA – and they don’t sweep anything under the carpet.

For The third year student, you can come talk to us. Why do you feel that Grubsheet is the solution when the very people who can help you solve the issue is right here at the University – we all go to the same class don’t we.

I am not trying to pick a fight. I’m just looking out for the good of the program. Things have been blown out of proportion and I think this needs to stop.

People may lash out at me…but really I am only looking out for the good for the program and for the welfare of the students.

Mr Davis, please just help us solve this once and for all by putting an end to this discussion.

Kalesi Meli, there’s something touchingly naive about the notion that I can “put an end to this discussion”. I wrote this piece a week ago and the comments are still flowing. You seem to believe that if I say “stop!”, everything will come to a complete halt. I don’t think it works that way. Eventually, everything will taper off on its own accord. But until then, people will have their say. I could delete comments but I don’t do that here except in the case of overt racism or obscenity.

I think she is asking grubsheet to refrain from posting further comments (from others) which is in your power to do. But yep, things appear to be tapering off. Another tasty topic of discussion could help that along.

Graham is right. Kalesi is naive and clueless and she is acting like an ostrich which bury its head in the sand and hope the problem will go away. Because of this attitude problem became worse and marc edge become more brave. Kalesi go back and study what purpose blogs serve. If JSA and USP was so great we won’t go to Grubsheet in the first place. Kalesi, why you not go and preach to marc edge your message? he did not listen to the dean and the Head of the school, he might listen to you eh? You are a very naive journalism student who expect us to take the shit and keep quite. You sound quite pathetic you know.

Mr Davis, God Is Not Always Right is correct. Another tasty topic of discussion would help things along.
I can see in the Fiji Sun today an interesting article on Better Journalists. It mentions that a lot of USP journalism graduates go and work for NGOs as public relations officers.
I am wondering why this is and I am also hoping some of the very animated people who have been commenting in this discussion might be able to help on this.
I would like to ask this question. Is the USP producing journalists or is it producing public relations officers?
I read in the Fiji Sun recently that they are sending their Fiji Sun journalists to Indian universities now and already have one back and three more still studying there.
Why is the Fiji Sun doing this when it would be much easier to send them to USP? I think that could be a tasty topic for further discussion. Thank you.

At least Graham has the guts to be transparent and have everything out in the open unlike you who complains and throws temper tantrums against students who disagree with your views and refuse to answer questions aimed at you by CFL. You are a cowardly man and your shifty looks compliment that trait very well. Have fun with your new found racist buddies at coup 4.5, an abomination much worse than qorvis.

Student, I have read yours and the famous drama queen Naisau’s comments. You two are traitors to us fellow journalism students. You know very well what is going on, but ingore it. Even denying that Magalie was bullied by this nasty and spiteful man, and pretending everything is ok when it is not, and USP system has failed . You two cowards make me feel sick and disgusted . You are spineless, sucking up to Marc Edge because of his bullshit about international standards. It is sickening how you hero worship mac Edge. You two are a sellout who have been conned by international standards bullshit or total idiots with colonised minds who think a white man is always right. Marc edge would have never dared to treat canada students in the way he has treated us. They would have sued his arse off. But he will get what is coming because it is all well documented. Just wait and see. Hopefully then you two idiots minds will open up.

Well, I’m glad you’re big enough to start this off with name-calling. Neisau is a very good friend of mine, so first of all, spell her name right, second, be brave enough to tell that to her face instead of having to come here. If you have a problem with us, then come to us and talk to us.
Most of the first years, 2nd years and 3rd years share our opinion except for the few (like you) that don’t have the balls to SPEAK UP in the meetings when you actually have the opportunity to do so. With that being said, we can’t all be traitors! We actually discussed this a little in the newsroom with a few of the 2nd and 3rd years, and they agree with us.
I do believe you got your tenses mixed up. It’s not, ‘what is going on”, it’s “what WAS going on.” As in, these issues are in the past because we talked about it and reconciled our differences. Those who HAVEN’T, are the spineless ones who like to hide here on grubsheet spouting a load of crap (pardon my language) instead of bringing these issues up during the meetings.
I’m not impressed with your “colonized” mind comment. That’s totally uncalled for. Him being white, black or yellow doesn’t make a difference to the fact he IS our professor and educator, EXCUSE US for being better students than you are. That was RACIST and prejudicial of you.
His issue with Magalie is just THAT. Their issue, BETWEEN them and no concern of ours, yours or grubsheet’s. If she thinks she was bullied and victimized, she will take it up with the relevant authorities. She is a big girl and she can handle her own battles. Magalie is also a very good friend of mine and I am sorry this has happened but I saw no “victimizing” as you put it and if there was any, I’m sure she knows what to do.

We have an American student, who said himself that Marc is just like any other professor you’d have there. If you’re suggesting that he treats us different because of our “Race”, then you’re coming from a different angle all together and seriously need to check yourself.

I don’t think Marc is always right, neither does Neisau. She’s locked horns with him on a few occasions.

I’m sorry if our opinion about Marc differs from yours but from the tone of your comment, I don’t give a cow’s arse either. It’s obvious you’re a very prejudiced person, biased, spiteful and COWARDLY. Hope to see you at the meeting today and HOPE you bring up all these angst you seem to be having.

Before you continue to post more rude comments about Prof. Marc Edge and us 1st years, please use better English like a proper journalist would. It makes me laugh every time I read your comments because they never really appear to have been written by a USP student but by a primary school child.

Here is one example:

September 21, 2012 at 2:21 PM : “Graham is right. Kalesi is naive and clueless and she is acting like an ostrich which bury its head in the sand and hope the problem will go away. Because of this attitude problem became worse and marc edge become more brave…..why you not go and preach to marc edge your message? he did not listen to the dean and the Head of the school, he might listen to you eh?”

Here’s another:

September 24, 2012 at 6:28 AM: “Student, I have read yours and the famous drama queen Naisau’s comments… You know very well what is going on, but ingore it. Even denying that Magalie was bullied by this nasty and spiteful man, and pretending everything is ok when it is not, and USP system has failed…. It is sickening how you hero worship mac Edge. You two are a sellout who have been conned by international standards bullshit or total idiots with colonised minds who think a white man is always right. Marc edge would have never dared to treat canada students in the way he has treated us. They would have sued his arse off. But he will get what is coming because it is all well documented. Just wait and see. Hopefully then you two idiots minds will open up.”

First of all, get your tenses right. Secondly, check you grammar – “why you not go and preach to marc edge your message?” sounds like one of those internet memes with the stick figures (why you no good english? What language are you being taught with?). Lastly, spell correctly. Last time I checked there is no such word as ‘ingore’ and names of people and countries must be correct. I do hope you don’t really make such elementary mistakes when it comes to your Wansolwara stories. By the way, if you still do not understand even these basics, then perhaps you should just post in your native tongue.

My, my, Marc has influenced and brainwashed you first years more than I thought. Oh my God, you are like his clones the way you are picking on mistakes! You sound just like him. Mac should be high school teacher. Hahahah! you people have no mind of your own. You likes his apes. He ridicules us just like you people are doing – what a great teaching method. you ridicule your students and favour some over others. Marc is a lousy teacher because he can’t see beyond grammar. Totally uninspiring. We wrote almost all stories in wansolawara. You first years can hardly string together a few paragraphs of news. No one is believing this international standard bullshit except gullible, brainwashed first-years.

Sad. Really sad. How did the focus shift from the symposium issues to USP Journalism students fighting amongst themselves and bringing in personal issues that have ALREADY been dealt with ???

I am not here to attack any student by the way. But after reading all these comments, seriously !! I don’t think I can follow Mahatma Gandhi’s advice of ” offering the other side of your face when someone slaps you” . I have always been proud to be a USP student. But my Gosh !! What is all this ? Not only the Journalism program… but the reputation and respect of USP is going down the drain by all this unnecessary drama.

We had a meeting with Marc Edge yesterday. To all those who are negatively commenting and ridiculing the 1st years and Marc… where were you ? If you had other classes, our meeting time can be changed as per your requests so that you can bring in all your grievances in the newsroom rather than posting it here for all the world to see and make fun of. Really… people are reading and laughing. USP and the Journalism students have become a laughing stock !!
Is this the way you are going to re-act at workplaces if you have differences with your boss or fellow colleagues ???

Yes it is true. As 1st years, we do have a strong bond with our professor. Well hello !! He has taught us for so long now so isn’t it obvious !

Dear Marc Edge clones…who and where art thou ?? If you really have a problem with us 1st years, why don’t you bring it up in meetings ? If you have problems with Marc, why don’t you bring it up in meetings ? WHY here ?? So that you can gain followers like twitter ? I am sorry… I mean no harm but all this ain’t helping.

I have no problem being taught by Marc and I am sure MOST of my 1st year FRIENDS do not as well. Yes. That is what we are. Friends. We do not go back biting each other here on grubsheet. And because we respect our professor and because we are sick and tired of people insulting him and us, we HAD to comment !!

Do you think driving Marc away will be a good thing ? Think again!! He is the one we want to be taught by.

When we have meetings… it feels like everyone is all fine and have solved all their differences. It seems as if we are starting new. Then suddenly, THIS !! I am sorry… but get over it and concentrate on your studies, graduate and find a good job…which we all are studying for. Let Marc do his job. And we do ours.

A prayer from most 1st years : We wish that Marc does not leave us. At least he is treating us like we are “something” and not “nothing”. We wish he teaches us till the day we graduate.

A kind message to my friends and our respected professor : Do not worry about your reputation… worry about your character. Because reputation is what people THINK you are…character is what you really are . And as long as we know who and what we really are, that’s all it matters.

Please stop with the name-callings, stop condemning and stop acting like victims !!! Deal with all this in a proper, civilized manner. kerekere.

I’m pretty sure Graham and Marc can handle the pressure – its just that I now worry about the students.

When students reveal their identity and support Marc maybe there’s a risk that they’ll be under pressure for their grades to be reviewed because of someone may come up with the notion that there’s favoritism.

For those who are against Marc and don’t reveal their identity and if they fail they may complain to USP that they have been mistreated – as Marc says (I think) he knows them.

Oh my goodness…………. please USP …….. maybe something needs to be done. On the other hand I really feel sorry for USP officials because I have no idea what else they can do here.

Maybe somebody might be able to come up with some ideas. Or maybe we just have to expect that nothing can be done and just let the issue ‘die away a natural death’.

Well what do I know…………… I just pray for you students.not to be too drastically affected. And my you all pass your courses with flying colours. And also importantly, may we all learn from what has transpired in here for the benefit of our future children.

Finally someone said something which I can agree to ! Thank you Riverside.
As students, at the beginning, we were actually hesitant to comment using our own identity. Because of the very fact that our grades “can” be affected. But then it becomes difficult to be in the same newsroom with the very people who “anonymously” post crap about other “students” and pretend they don’t know anything.Posting with true identity is a proof that we are confident in what we are saying.

I don’t know about other’s, but my post did not “attack” anyone nor did it insult anyone. It is just a mere word of advice in order to save JSA and USP from further humiliation. And I do not think that trying to bring peace would ever affect my grade. I would rather stay out of all this, but for once, I HAD to say what I had to.

Marc, this is truly bizarre. You are intimidating people with this kind of response, pretending to know who they are when it is complete guesswork. Those caught in the crossfire who may be innocent are falling victim to your paranoia and they are being lined up to be victimised without any concrete evidence against them. This will be referred to Professor Williams. This farce has gone on long enough.

Given Fara’s recent blog attack on me, a link to which has been posted below, I believe that I should be the one suing Fara, not the other way around. She has published numerous false and defamatory statements about me.

Former JSA girl

Posted September 27, 2012 at 11:04 PM

Then do it, we will see just how false they are when you do. Talk is cheap, and we have already determined that you are a compulsive liar

I am really sorry but i haven’t seen this post until a friend from the Journalism Programme told me about it and that my name was mentioned twice. Marc i am sorry if you think that was me that was commenting earlier but hell i would never use a fake name. You know me better than that. If i have something to say, i will say it and not hide behind a fake name.

Faranisese Ratu

Posted September 29, 2012 at 2:06 AM

Another thing, there a few people here who seem to really dislike you Marc. I don’t blame them. I guess most of them are your students as well. Fiji was the last place that abolished the practice of cannibalism. Somehow we are now one of the very few countries where everyone is very nice with friendly faces. However, please do not mistake our smiles or our silence for weakness. Far from it.

Magalie, you’re awesome. Don’t ever take crap like that. I am really sorry to hear what had happened in class. Like i said, nobody decides your future except for you. As for reference letters, screw that shit..I always say that media mainstream should never make experts “news”. Somehow when you make people news, you feed their ego. Friend don’t ever cry in class again. Its definitely not worth the tears. If you really believe in it, then stand proud. Never back down. Be patient as well. Don’t put too much feelings into these setbacks. They’ll drag you down. Smile and say “screw it” !!!…..you have a job and many of your stories has been published in the regional mainstream..So don’t worry too much. The only two good things that came out from Canada was Celin Dion and George Chuvalo. When he came, it had to be explained to all of us who he was and the work he had once done. So Margalie, whats important is just what you think of yourself. I hate to think you were suffering alone in there.

Foreigners who have an understanding of Pacific Islands and love these islands as much as its natives, those are the most probable ones whose perspectives we ought to take into account. Not newbies who have not lived here nor worked in our newsrooms nor faced with the same dilemma many local journalists face. Just my thoughts on this issue. Well some of it…..the rest,ummm

Just be strong and never back down. Never compromise. When you start to compromise your values, you are giving way for your beliefs to be dented.

@ Mark Edge,
What on earth they were looking at when this bugger was recruited….really it just boggles my mind and I am sure a lot of other reasonable people…..what on earth…….did they check his references and the guys who provided them….did they at least have a balanced look at his so called books..reviews ….which some critics have labelled as cut and paste job lacking depth, lacking originality, lacking investigative journalism.

I would like to bring those people to account…couldn’t they see a condescending character…..at the interview and did the interviewers have the necessary skills for the job….

USP is a highly regarded institution…….why on earth….why did they do it.

This bloke is making a mockery of not only the institution but rubbing it to the Fijian authorities in a sly manner…..just for some limelight…such pathetic individual this country has to deal with……such cunningness that he knows it is a regional university and if action is taken…like minded news personnel will make a big deal and would provide much fodder for ABC and the likes.

It works out like this: this is a nobody, a chance character happen to be the head of the journalism…quite an unknown and pathetic individual with “big” bullshit stories to tell about Vancouver, but quite an unknown.

Little did he know that the monkey on his shoulder will eventually climb on his head and shit on him…it was only a matter of time…..and what does he do……..he uses some his students to wipe the shit off his face….and yes call a friend in Canada….and that other “mixed” bloke…

Do we have to deal with such a bloke in this country….he has taken advantage of the Island hospitality and rubbed our nose in dirt.

At this moment, we politely ask you to leave. You are not wanted here.

Yes i think so. A little!….just a part of this anyway..the witty comment about Justin Bieber. That made me laugh. Oilei people its the weekend, let us have an awesome one!!..We can all continue this after the weekend~~…

Have a safe and enjoyable weekend everyone. If you drink, don’t drive and if you drive, then make sure you don’t drink!!!!

another unhappy student

Posted September 30, 2012 at 8:40 PM

What strange ramblings. Marc Edge was obviously dropped on his head too many times as a child. It really shows.

USP inside man

Posted September 30, 2012 at 8:48 PM

Dear Chand,

Professor Sudesh Mishra was the one who appointed him and is currently doing his best to keep the man @ USP ignoring his actions.

Faranisese Ratu @ 29, 2012 2:06 AM

Posted October 3, 2012 at 6:00 AM

Faranisese Ratu @ 29, 2012 at 2:06 AM

Well done Farah, you are showing far more wisdom and maturity than this so-called ‘Dr’ Marc Edge. Doing us islanders proud girl.

Pammy

Posted October 3, 2012 at 11:52 AM

I like Pammy too. Not too sure about Bieber though. But I am sure I do not like like this chap Mark Edge. He sounds scary.

Let me assure all you readers that all first years do not support what Marc did to Magalie. We are however afraid to post here for fear of similar victimization. Marc is not a great teacher, he is average at best. Even a famous local celebrity in the journalism program once asked on facebook if his lesson was really about journalism or how to be condescending towards Fiji (all the students protecting marc like poor lemings will know who I am talking about).

There are many first, second and third year students who do not agree with Marc but hold back because of the obvious fear of victimization. Nobody trusts the Journalism students organization or the University of the South Pacific and we plea for someone from the outside to please help us!

We would like to urge Magalie to fight on and that we will support her if this goes to any sort of court because we were there and saw what happened. Prayers to poor Magalie and her family for having to endure such victimization by this cruel man with no care for anyone but himself.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. These silly naive first years think that we students will risk our futures and come to meetings with our problems after poor magalie was victimized so much and USP did absolutely nothing.

Marc was even forced by the head of faculty Sudesh Mishra to take her back into class and to get rid of her he publicly humiliated her in her very first class. I even read earlier that some student agreed with what he did. It is amazing to see the length of the human mind, to follow whoever is in power regardless of whether he is right or wrong.

In any case please get out of the box minded thinking that Marc is teaching you poor first years.

Poor Magalie! Amidst all the talk of how I “victimised” her, nobody seems to want to mention what Magalie did to start all this. Yet every USP Journalism student knows that only too well. Why does nobody want to mention it? All I did was bring the subject up in class. After all, it had been the subject of some previous discussion, both inside and outside of class. There seems to be a decided lack of balance here. Why doesn’t some enterprising journalism student do a bit of research and present the facts for all to consider? They are easy to find, and you all know where to look. . . .

I have noticed that you completely ignored several questions which all asked you why you were forced by Sudesh Mishra to take Magalie back. You were clearly wrong and and Sudesh Mishra knew this and forced you to take magalie back despite your continuous attempts to keep her out of class. I even heard from Magalie that someone else is now marking all her assignments. No doubt you lost it completely when you were told that you could not have your way and decided to publicly shame her. You don’t seem to be a very good liar despite the numerous lies you are trying to sell.

Dear scared first year student,
if you’re afraid of Marc, why not go to the student rep? Take your concerns to her and she will approach Marc herself and say that someone has a problem with this and that, so and so.
I have a feeling that you’re not really a first year student. You quoted something on facebook (way out of context btw) and just added that you were there. That does not give much support to your post. I’m not saying you have to reveal yourself, but just saying to take it up with the rep.
She won’t reveal your identity.

Well he does quote Coup 4.5 in class and encourages students to visit it often. And all his fans at coup4.5 are taking his side here and they are new found buddies. Everyone knows coup 4.5 is filled with racist nobodies who encourage violence and accomplish nothing.

Upon doing some investigation i found this to be true. Marc teachs blogs for about three weeks and Irene teaches them everything else in the course JN 201 which is called “Print Journalism” and is supposed to be Marc Edges Specialty.

So we now know why the leading daily is sending it’s students to India and not USP.

So I believe my long.. positive attempted post did not work ! so I shall opt out of this before each and everything is repeated and words are twisted and turned around, regardless of the fact that somethings have already been discussed in our meeting with Sudesh Mishra and the follow-up meeting with Marc. Dear scared first-year student…yes… the Magalie thing in class was not appropriate. I guess each and every student would agree . But why bring that up now ? As for your other grievances, of course you are entitled to your own opinion and decisions.

The only point I tried to make earlier was that “all” these issues that are being discussed here should be dealt with in some other manner. Like I said, fighting among ourselves is just giving other people the opportunity to encourage sadism.

Remember that all the media organizations might be reading the above “discussions”. Even if posting anonymously, is this the image we want to portray as Journalism students of USP ? Last time I checked, I was told we were all a “family”…or so I thought. Well I am just a “first-year” student and perhaps my affirmative approach to these issues is not taken seriously. So there is nothing else I can say. I am here to learn and that’s it. “Who” teaches me is not my number one priority. But “learning” is ! Believe me, I have friends doing other majors who have professors from places like India & Sri Lanka. Although taught by superbly qualified educators, many students have differences with them. But I see them working hard trying to solve those differences and focusing on studies rather than trying to send the professors back home. Because this is real life ! It helps to experience things out of your comfort zone. (not that I am expert at it, but I try). It’s like whatever we do, we are judged by those who don’t even know us.

So instead of putting soooo much energy fighting among each other, lets focus on studies and the rest will ease of itself. That’s what I am doing because all this has started to affect my studies. Else, up to you guys.

When there is injustice and people attempt to hide it, it is called corruption. Fiji is a place currently trying to get rid of this corruption trend.

Any and every student has his/her right to post here or wherever they want, as do you, DO NOT think for a second that anybody really cares what you think and will stop fighting against injustice just because you said so.

The fact that you do not care who teaches you as long as you learn shows that even you have doubts about Edge but are reluctant to do anything about it because it may affect your grade, you are just making poor scared first years point for her/him.

SInce you like to use other countries as examples – In other countries if Marc Edge openly attacked Magalie for expressing her views on facebook and then victimized her he would be out the door already. Only USP and its abysmally low standards is keeping him in his post.

Marc is constantly commenting right here that it was all magalies fault (scroll up and read his previous comment) showing that he feels no remorse AT ALL and the matter is certainly NOT RESOLVED.

If media organisations are reading this then they should be ashamed of themselves. Here we have a man destroying students futures and they aren’t even attempting to investigate or report it.

My plea to you is to stop watching these injustices around you, grow a mind of your own and become a great journalist instead of a mindless bee which moves at it’s queens command.

You sound like a REALLY unhappy student ! ANYWAY, as I mentioned before, it was no doubt that my words were going to be twisted and turned around. Please do not wrongly interpret my words, please do not assume I have doubts, and please for God sake, when did I ever say “stop fighting against injustice?” .

Again, as I mentioned earlier, my post is not about Magalie or Marc or “their” issues with each other. Injustice you say ? If you can re-call, Magalie, when the issue was extremely fresh stated it herself she does NOT want pity nor people fighting “on behalf ” of her. Been there, done that. Nothing achieved. So I know when NOT to poke my nose in other people’s business.

I know many people have issues with Marc, like Magalie (I sooo do not like bringing her up unnecessarily), and for obvious reasons. That’s fine. I don’t have a problem with that at all ! But if “I” do NOT have any issues with Marc, our tutor or ANY student at all, why does it have to be defined by the notion of being a mindless bee or not being caring? I am just being neutral.

Yes I do not really bother who teaches me. As in which race & color my teacher might be. No one is perfect. If you and other’s have problems with Marc, go ahead. It is none of my business. I don’t think I am obliged to be justifying WHY I have no problems with anyone (which is sappozed to be a good thing).

And yes, I agree with you that no one really cares of what I think. Why would they ? Sadism is so appealing that no one gives a tah about the good and positive things that one has to say.Never mind.

Just to let you know, I also have the natural gift of sarcasm and the ability to make witty little comments, but as I said before, I have no intention of harming ANYONE.

I hate to contradict you, Priya, but it is simply not true to say that each and every student would agree that the “Magalie thing in class was not appropriate.” I have talked to several students and teaching staff who thought it was entirely appropriate in light of Magalie’s actions. Your classmate Neisau even defends what I did above, pointing out that Magalie was “pretty out of control with what she did.”

Here’s Neisau’s take: “I’m sorry but I have no sympathy for Magalie as she chose to air this out in public before following proper channels in USP. Marc apologized to her in class in front of all of us. Should he have projected it up in class…..some say NO it was insensitive but I’m a HELL YES! If you’re gonna run your mouth off in cyber space have the balls to defend it in class and not bitch and whine about it in “forums” and cry in a corner.”

Believe me, I thought long and hard about it beforehand and finally decided that I couldn’t NOT do what I did. It was just too perfect, especially in light of the topic of that day’s class — defamation. I even informed my dean and head of school of what I intended to do, arguing that it was an irresistible “teachable moment.”

I admitted in class that I was wrong in dropping Magalie from the Journalism programme, because it turned out she had not failed quite as many courses as I thought. Unfortunately, I had relied on some bad information. I felt I had to apologise to Magalie for having dropped her from the programme, and for having given mistaken information to the class earlier. But was what I said to the class earlier defamation? I don’t think so, but maybe Magalie could sue me for it. I think it was more like an administrative error. But what about what Magalie did? C’mon, everybody is dying to know!

Interesting, the student you quote uses words like “balls” “bitch” and supports public humiliation, you sure know how to train them Marc. She really did cry in a corner and is a mother, this shows volumes of both your character and Naisiaus.

When the full story about this is written, the Dean and the head of school Professor Sudesh will be asked if they were informed of your decision to shame magalie in class and they will also be taken to task if they have agreed to such public shaming.

Nothing any student does can ever deserve the way Magalie was treated. Your apology was clearly just for show and your comments show just how sorry you really are.

Still avoiding the “being forced to take Magalie in” questions? Not to mention professor Sudesh having zero faith in you and getting another person to Mark magalies assignments because he doesn’t believe you will do it fairly.

“I would love nothing more than to respond in detail by chronicling the reasons for Ms Tingal failing not one but now three of my courses. Believe me, they have nothing to do with her questioning the basis of any of my lectures. However, I believe it would be unethical for me to do so, as it would likely violate her privacy rights. If she would be prepared to consent to such a disclosure, however, I would be happy to give you all the details.”

So over here to still claim that Magalie failed 3 of your courses which you would love to detail but can’t. Then you say it was a administration error.

It seems your lies are catching up to you Mr Edge, even on this forum.

Perhaps horde of other students who dislike you can not pick out your terribly obvious lies and excuses but now I have started posting it’s over.

As you must know by now, the rule is that you may not take a course three times, so you can only fail it twice. You need to pass every course in Journalism to graduate in the subject, so if you fail one twice, you’re out of the programme. I was under the mistaken impression that Magalie had failed a course twice. That turned out to be incorrect. Mea culpa. She has not failed any one course twice. I would love to give you more details of Magalie’s academic performance, but I feel I cannot do so without her consent.

another unhappy student

Posted September 27, 2012 at 11:22 PM

I think that we have firmly established that you have made many, many mistakes. You do not answer and question but post what we already know.

Since reading and understanding simple English is hard let me break it down for you:

-Various students and staff members repeatedly told you that you were wrong about Magalie and you refused to listen

-until Professor Mishra FORCED you to take her back.

-Angry at this you attacked poor magalie in her first class back causing her great humiliation and distress.

-Your apology was for show as you clearly show no remorse and still openly mock Magalie and remain adamant that it was her fault.

-you avoid answering the big question about being forced to take her back and Mishra having no faith in your integrity and fairness and making someone else mark magalies paper.

-The Dean and head of school DID not give you permission to shame Magalie in class. (lie caught)

-Stop Repeating things, you do not care about ethics as you have practically told every1 that Magalie failed 3 courses blah blah

Former JSA girl

Posted September 27, 2012 at 11:31 PM

Not to mention the “journalism or condescending Fiji” from our very own queen celebrity. Choosing to ignore all the real stuff and just focus on one point huh?

Marc, I can’t help noticing that you have something of an obsession about people suing each other. The first lesson you ought to be teaching is that suing for defamation is for people with blemish-free reputations who are unfairly attacked with false information that damages their reputations in the eyes of normal fair-minded people.

You need to have a reputation to defend in the first place. But it is a long established convention that no matter what is said, journalists should refrain from suing each other as an example to others not to impede freedom of expression by resorting to the law.

You are suggesting here that if a member of your class doesn’t like something you say, they can sue you. Most Pacific islanders don’t have the resources to ever launch such an action. But it is the fact that the Head of Journalism at the University of the South Pacific would even think along these lines, let alone express such a sentiment, that raises serious questions about your behaviour. You have the ability to sue. Your students don’t. This is not an equal relationship and gives rise to the suggestion that you are using the threat of legal action to intimidate others.

Your threat to sue me is quite another thing. If you do your research, you will find that I won substantial damages in an unfair dismissal case against one of Australia’s biggest networks that went on for three years in the Australian courts. I was also one of the reporters in Australia’s biggest ever defamation case. The point is that I am a big boy with lots of experience and you can wrestle with me in the courts on a more equal footing. But you know full well that your average student is hard pressed to find the financial resources to even make it to class, let alone consult a lawyer.

So let’s not have any more talk about suing. In the Pacific context and a USP journalism context in particular, it’s not a good look and does you no credit.

Strictly hypothetical, Graham. My students are learning about Media Law this semester. They need to start thinking about whether they could be sued for what they write and to be careful when they do so. You are a resident of Australia, so I would have trouble suing you. I would have a much better case if I could, because you have libelled me much more severely than the Sun has. But they have assets in Fiji. . . .

Graham Davis

Posted September 28, 2012 at 4:41 PM

Pardon me, Marc, but precisely how have I libeled you? I’d be interested to know the details.

1/FACT: You have been the subject of an ongoing investigation by the USP. 2/FACT: That investigation is into several formal complaints that have been lodged with the USP against you.3/FAIR COMMENT: Your behaviour in certain instances is highly questionable or demonstrably inappropriate for the Head of Journalism at USP.

So the defence will be truth if you ever decide to launch proceedings against me in the state of New South Wales.

You’re great at bombast. Your problem is getting your facts straight. You’ve been telling your lies for so long now that you’ve started to believe them.

#1 WRONG
#2 WRONG
#3 The defence of Fair Comment, as my students well know by now, will fail given evidence of malice, of which you have provided ample throughout your vendetta against me.

I have a pretty good idea of where you have been getting your information, and I would never rely on those sources for anything, much less something that could get me sued. You have been used, you have libelled me, and you (or the Fiji Sun, preferably both) will apologise or you will pay.

Graham Davis

Posted September 28, 2012 at 5:47 PM

Marc:

1/ Confirmed to me again yesterday.
2/ Contacted by yet another complainant today (and not a student)
4/ No malice. The defence will be truth.

Don’t be jealous. I attend all my classes, I do all my work, I have a good coursework. I study smart during finals.Therefore, I do not “hope” for a good grade but I “work towards” a good grade.

It’s rather immature of you to make such statements. I will make sure NOT to treat next year’s first-year students this way. Anyway, this is getting boring… it’s like a trend…whoever makes a “positive” comment is brutality attacked. If you are not a first-year student, try coming to JN103 class, see our marked reports and exam papers where one spelling error = 2marks off, and bla bla bla. Do you see us complaining ? No… And favoritism you say !! You gotta be kidding me ! Every student is treated and marked equally. But I am in no obligation to justify this to someone who hides behind Grubsheet to say all this.

I shall not say anything more because no one seems to get the message behind my post >> JSA & USP reputation. Continue to condemn while I focus on other important issues in life.

I didn’t want to be rude…but I’m sorry, maybe I should take lessons from you ? Either that… OR… you need to read properly. Oh wait … “bye bye Priya” ! Get your name right first.

Maryann

Posted October 1, 2012 at 9:58 AM

Priya was courageous enough to put up her name, and mentioned that she disagreed on some things with Marc. That’s more than what I can say for you anonymous people who post just to antagonize and demean others. She has her right to opinion and has her right to be heard.
To the unhappy student who said no one cares what she thinks, I think that has got to be one of the BIGGEST problems you people have.
Stop being so narrow-minded, egotistical and open your eyes to what other people have to say.
Your hate for Marc is prejudicing your judgement, which should not be the case if you want to be a journalist.
It’s also really sad that everyone keeps bringing Magalie up, and she has only made about two or three posts. Are you guys her ambassadors? She can speak for herself. Leave her alone and mind your own problems.
To the unhappy student who is happily buzzing around like a “mindless bee.” If you believe so much in free media and in airing things out in the open- then I agree with you. Whole-heartedly.
I just have a problem with your version of the truth; your letting prejudice against Marc affect your objectivity, your not revealing yourself and not bringing these issues up at the meeting and your not having any respect for what other people think.
Magalie and Farah have their own reasons not to like Marc and I definitely understand where Magalie is coming from (not sure about Farah) but I also understand Marc and his stand on this.
Your comment about “silly” “naive” first years just shows how prejudicial you are.
You coming to the meetings and airing out your concerns will in no way risk your future and in fact, I remember the first meeting, students spoke up against Marc. We resolved our issues there.
We agreed to keep it off the internet in order to uphold the integrity and dignity of the Journalism unit in USP. It seems though, most of you are sorely lacking in that and choose to attack with ski-masks while advocating for free press and freedom of speech.
I myself posted anonymously the first few times, because I had the option to post anonmously and because ofcourse I knew some of you would be petty enough to accuse me of sucking up.
However, I have my name up because some of you posting aren’t really who you say you are and I wanted to affirm that I am a first year student, I am being taught by Marc Edge and I have no problem with his teaching.
Face it people. In the real world, most of the time you don’t get to choose who teaches you or who your editor is and so forth.
You can’t put it down to victimization if you’re not willing to perform.

In reference to Unhappy student’s comment on Neisau and also the “public celebrity.” First of all, don’t quote her out of context. She shared her opinion about his teaching and though it was one that weighed against him, I can tell you, she didn’t let that put a rift between her and Marc. You can go ask her yourself.
With Neisau’s choice of words. You can’t blame her for being fustrated with those of you on here. You people just don’t listen and never learn.
She didn’t say she was okay with public humiliation, in fact, just the other day she chastised a lecturer for calling out students that were passing notes BECAUSE she did not want them to be embarrased.
Magalie was a different case because she attacked Marc online and tried to bring him to shame. With that said though, Marc was not trying to get even. He uses real life incidents to teach and he thought it would be a good lesson on defamation.
He himself said that what she had said was not defamation but just her opinion. Where is the victimization there? He meant no malice and though I agree with Priya, I thought this was an incident better left alone; I understand Marc’s stand on this.
The incident with Magalie was talked about everywhere and Marc thought it was fair to bring it out in class anyway, seeing as some of us were quacking behind backs.
He apologized.
She cried when he apologized and I probably would have too but I’m going to confirm now (seeing as I was present at the time) that he did not say anything to demean her. He said he was wrong.
Again, I’d like to repeat I am not going to go against Magalie here, I would just like you guys who weren’t even present not to talk and pack up your pom poms. No taking sides!
Another thing about being journalists. You can’t report events that you weren’t even present at.
I admire however, unhappy student, that you never use any vulgar language and speak as well as write in a proper fashion at all times. Neisau though, oh man, she used the words balls and bitches! I’m appalled. None of us ever swear at all. -_-
I think she had the right to express herself and her fustrations and I don’t blame her.
This is all I have to say. Thank you. I have studying to do.

Anonymous stranger

Posted October 1, 2012 at 9:00 PM

PMS must be a hard time for you Maryann. I hope Marc gives you good grades for all this sucking up

241 comments – probably the highest number of comments in Grubsheet? Perhaps in other Fiji blogs too?

So what does that mean?……….. Oh dear…..whatever it is – it’s like watching one of them Grammy Awards movies where you are sure to be at the edge of your seat for the entire duration of the movie.

But only this time, you want the movie to please come to a conclusion quickly …….. But then there’s an urge within you to remain glued to your seat wondering whether there’s more of those eerie things going to appear. Maybe something interesting is waiting to make a regal entry into the scene and…………..

Just wondering how long an investigation into these sorts of things should take.

Perhaps USP needs another week to come to a conclusion.

Maybe USP won’t take more than 3 weeks! Perhaps the only acceptable delay may be any survey that may need to be taken to gauge the views of students in case there are other similar ‘Magalie’ incidents in USP that students dare not mention for fear of their identity being blown.

Anywayz, ………. thank you USP for looking into this – and may God guide you in coming to a fair conclusion.

“and Pamela Anderson’s breasts — they count for two!!” ….this is the professor, the head of journalism at USP, Dr Mark Edge in reference to the number of “famous” Canadians……
….and this is what I wrote above….”Do we have to deal with such a bloke in this country….he has taken advantage of the Island hospitality and rubbed our nose in dirt.
At this moment, we politely ask you to leave. You are not wanted here.”

And this is what I say now…..you have insulted the intelligence of us ordinary Fijian folks and now the modesty of our Pacific women, especially here in Fiji…you have already crossed the boundry of ethics and now the boundry of decency in this country.
We have our daughters at USP, our Fijian and Pacific Islander daughters,lovingly nurtured, who not only come to study in their respective diciplines but also cross culturally mingle and exchange ideas so they become better citizens, ethically and morally……
and what did you do…….post on this widely read blog about boobs…….
…..some ethics and some decency…….

I now say again, you are not a fit and proper person to engage with our children….please leave.

The media is absolutely essential to the functioning of a democracy. It’s not our job to cozy up to power. We’re supposed to be the check and balance on government.

Journalism is the only profession explicitly protected by the U.S. Constitution, because journalists are supposed to be the check and balance on government. We’re supposed to be holding those in power accountable. We’re not supposed to be their megaphone. That’s what the corporate media have become.

Let me tell you a story. Several years ago Tavita came asking for a job. He said he had been a teacher at Samoa College, and he wanted to work as a reporter. Why did he leave Samoa College, I asked. He did not give a credible explanation.

Anyway, I gave him a job. He became a reporter. Sometime later, he approached me again and said he had been given a scholarship to do his Masters at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, and he wanted time off from work.

I gave him time off. Later still when he returned from Suva, he came back to work. Asked if he had finished his Masters, he said yes, but he had to finish his thesis.

Well, what do you want to do, work or finish your thesis? He wanted to work, so I gave him work. Again.

At the time, we had a policy – we still have it – that no reporter conducting an interview at any function – public or otherwise – helped himself to food and drinks if such were served.

The rule is that when the interview is done and the photos are taken, the reporter leaves. In those days, all of our reporters respected this rule except Terry Tavita.

Since he would not leave until he was fed and soused, we gave him money for his drinks somewhere else, on the understanding that he left the function immediately after his interview.

Later still, he had an argument with the paper’s editor at the time, Peter Lomas, and Terry Tavita stormed out the door. He did not have the decency to come and tell me what his quarrel with Lomas was about.

I felt let down and sad.

Later still I was told that he went straight to Prime Minister Tuilaepa’s office, and he was hired to work for the Savali. You know the rest.

And then he started attacking me in the Savali, which is a government paper funded with my taxes. I never said a word.

Since then he has been developing a defiant standard of reporting in defense of his “boss” – Tuilaepa – so that he inevitably earned the unflattering moniker “lapdog” among his media colleagues.

And you want him to come and work as a “good Samaritan “ in this paper? No, thank you very much. Keep him there. You need someone like him to defend you and protect you.

As for your worries about the clothes you’re wearing when your picture is taken, well, honestly you should not. Personally, I don’t care about what clothes I’m wearing anyway. If it hadn’t been for common decency and the fear of disturbing the peace, I would go around with what I was born with.

I reckon you should think the same way too. Besides, clothes are just skin-deep. It is what’s inside you that count. I know you’ve got a good heart and that is all that matters. Trust me. The rest is all rubbish thrashed about in the wind.

And lastly Tuilaepa, you are a handsome man. We all know that. You are handsome both outside and inside. So that wherever in the world your photo is taken, it is published and your fame is assured. And always remember that it is not the photo that counts but the man behind the photo.

So don’t be paranoid. You are still our “Man of the Decade” whether you believe me or not. And that’s the naked truth.

But thank you for your kind words about my “growing old gracefully and, well, comfortably.” I know. I’m finding it rather hard not being able to grow old fast enough. Which is why I must thank you once again for those mind-wrecking court cases that sort of really hastened the aging process along.

Faraway, Marc Edge is the subject of an internal inquiry after complaints from some of his students and a NZ post graduate student. Grubsheet understands that Individual students are currently in the process of being interviewed. We will update when we have more information.

The Fiji TV news is reporting tonight that Dr Edge has been demoted. I do hope this will end this whole sorry affair and the students will be able to continue their studies without fear of victimisation.

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ABOUT GRUBSHEET

Grubsheet Feejee is the blogsite of Graham Davis, a dual Fijian-Australian national working as a media and communications specialist in both countries and in other parts of the Asia Pacific.

Graham has had a four decade-long career in the mainstream media in Britain, Australia and Fiji. He has reported for the BBC, ABC, SBS and the Nine and Seven Networks and has written for a range of newspapers and magazines in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji. His multiple awards include Walkley and Logie Awards in Australia and a New York Festivals Medal in the United States.

More recently, Graham has been a consultant to the GeoPolitical Solutions division of the global communications company, Qorvis-MSLGROUP, which represents a range of sovereign clients around the world. Part of his brief is to assist the Fijian Government with its program to introduce the first genuine democracy in the nation’s history in 2014.

Graham is broadly supportive of the Bainimarama Government's reform agenda but invites comments from people of all political persuasions. Please don't label your return volley "anonymous". Give yourself a name or pseudonym so that readers can track your progress over time.

Many of these postings have appeared in mainstream newspapers such as The Australian and the Fiji Sun – where Graham has been a columnist - and on other websites, including newmatilda.com and Pacific Scoop NZ.

Feejee is the original name for Fiji - a derivative of the indigenous Viti and the Tongan Fisi - and was widely used until the late 19th century.